Abstract

IT IS NECESSARY to acknowledge things in themselves, realities which exist apart from all qualification by anything else. Were there no thing in itself, there would be nothing to which one could refer what one knew, nothing with which one could interplay, nothing that was distinct from our categories or ideas, and no one who was able to engage in the act of referring. But were there just one thing in itself, not only would everything else be its product, it would not be able to give or receive anything. There would just be a fulgurating unknown One whose emanations vanished as soon as they appeared, unintelligible products of an unintelligible activity by an unintelligible ultimate.