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276 ourselves in an image; we can only recognize him in thought. He is the infinitude of all qualities thought of as a unit; but we recognize him only in single manifestations, which we trace back to him as the centre; but we cannot comprehend this centre as such, nor make any exhaustive representation of it. The words one and only one, with which we could designate God as the only self-existent substance, are always founded on human conceptions. God is an incommensurable quantity, which can have no reference to any other, because nothing beyond it exists. One and only one, though taken in their exclusive sense, still presuppose a reference to some other."

"Does God then stand in no relation of comparison with nature and history?"

"Nothing exists that is not of him and from him; all that occurs he does; all that is he is; it is only a change of form; the eternal, the infinite is ever the same."

"Oh, that is glorious!" cried Olympia; "the pure childlike joy of nature, with its hidden, smiling deities, such as the ancients had, is here so beautifully combined with the awe-inspired reverence that Jews and Christians observe in the contemplation of nature. God lives in us, ourselves; from the crimson lips of the rose, from the modest eyes of the violet, in the melting notes of the nightingale, the same spirit speaks that lives in me; they know,