Reason does not, however, attain to the Absolute Being directly and immediately, without any intervening medium. To assert this would be to fall into the error of Plotinus, and the Alexandrian Mystics. Reason is the offspring of God, a ray of the Eternal Reason, but it is not to be identified with God. Reason attains to the Absolute Being indirectly, and by the interposition of truth. Absolute truth is an attribute and a manifestation of God. "Truth is incomprehensible without God, and God is incomprehensible without truth. Truth is placed between human intelligence, and the supreme intelligence as a kind of mediator."[68] Incapable of contemplating God face to face, reason adores God in the truth which represents and manifests Him. [Footnote 67: Cousin, "True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 103.] [Footnote 68: Id., ib., p. 99.] Absolute truth is thus a revelation of God, made by God to the reason of man, and as it is a light which illuminates every man, and is perpetually perceived by all men, it is a universal and perpetual revelation of God to man. The mind of man is "the offspring of God," and, as such, must have some resemblance to, and some correlation with God. Now that which constitutes the image of God in man must be found in the reason which is correlated with, and capable of perceiving the truth which manifests God, just as the eye is correlated to the light which manifests the external world. Absolute truth is, therefore, the sole medium of bringing the human mind into communion with God; and human reason, in becoming united to absolute truth, becomes united to God in his manifestation in spirit and in truth. The supreme law, and highest destination of man, is to become united to God by seeking a full consciousness of, and loving and practising the Truth.[69] [Footnote 69: Henry's Cousin, p. 511, 512.] It will at once be obvious that the grand crucial questions by which this philosophy of religion is to be tested are-- 1st. _How will Cousin prove to us that human reason is in possession of universal and necessary principles or absolute truths?_ and, 2d. _How are these principles shown to be absolute? how far do these principles of reason possess absolute authority?_