Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/158

 by which the One thing that exists, and exists only in its invisibility, becomes visible, and the means by which there is built up for the One an image, a form, and a shadow of itself in the sphere of imagery. Everything else that may become visible within this infinity of the world of images is a nothing proceeding from nothing, a shadow of the shadow, and solely the means by which that first nothing of infinity and time itself becomes visible and opens up to thought the ascent to invisible being without image.

Within this, the sole possible image of infinity, the invisible directly manifests itself only as free and original life of the sight, or as a decision of the will made by a reasonable being; in no other way whatever can it appear and manifest itself. All continuous existence that appears as non-spiritual life is only an empty shadow projected from the world of sight and enlarged by the intermediary of the nothing—a shadow, in contrast to which, and by recognizing it as a nothing enlarged by transmission, the world of sight itself ought to elevate itself to the recognition of its own nothingness and to the acknowledgment of the invisible as the only thing that is true.

109. Now, in these shadows of the shadows of shadows that philosophy of being, which believes in death and becomes a mere philosophy of nature, the deadest of all philosophies, remains a captive, and dreads and worships its own creature.

This constancy is the expression of its true life and of its love; and herein this philosophy is to be believed. But, when it goes on to say that this being, which it presupposes as actually existing, is one with, and precisely the same as, the Absolute, it is not to be believed, no matter how often it asserts this, nor even though it takes many an oath in confirmation. It does not know this, but only