Now, will Kant reply that this reason, which is much purer than that which he has known and described, which is wholly pure, which is conceived as something disengaged from reflection, from volition, from every thing that constitutes personality, is nevertheless personal, since we have a consciousness of it, and since it is thus marked with subjectivity? To this argument we have nothing to respond, except that it is destroyed in the excess of its pretension. In fact, if, that reason may not be subjective, we must in no way participate in it, and must not have even a consciousness of its exercise, then there is no means of ever escaping this reproach of subjectivity, and the ideal of objectivity which Kant pursued is a chimerical, extravagant ideal, above, or rather beneath, all true intelligence, all reason worthy the name; for it is demanding that this intelligence and this reason should cease to have consciousness of themselves, whilst this is precisely what characterizes intelligence and reason.[40] Does Kant mean, then, that reason, in order to possess a really objective power, cannot make its appearance in a particular subject, that it must be, for example, wholly outside of the subject which I am? Then it is nothing for me; a reason that is not mine, that, under the pretext of being universal, infinite, and absolute in its essence, does not fall under the perception of my consciousness, is for me as if it were not. To wish that reason should wholly cease to be subjective, is to demand something impossible to God himself. No, God himself can understand nothing except in knowing it, with his intelligence and with the consciousness of this intelligence. There is subjectivity, then, in divine knowledge itself; if this subjectivity involves skepticism, God is also condemned to skepticism, and he can no more escape from it than men; or indeed, if this is too ridiculous, if the knowledge which God has of the exercise of his own intelligence does not involve skepticism for him, neither do the knowledge which we have of the exercise of our intelligence, and the subjectivity attached to this knowledge, involve it for us.