So neither reason nor love can attain the absolute unity of mysticism. In order to correspond to such an object, there must be in us something analogous to it, there must be a mode of knowing that implies the abolition of consciousness. In fact, consciousness is the sign of the _me_, that is to say, of that which is most determinate: the being who says, _me_, distinguishes himself essentially from every other; that is for us the type itself of individuality. Consciousness should degrade the ideal of dialectic knowledge, or every division, every determination must be wanting, in order to respond to the absolute unity of its object. This mode of pure and direct communication with God, which is not reason, which is not love, which excludes consciousness, is ecstasy ([Greek: ekstasis]). This word, which Plotinus first applied to this singular state of the soul, expresses this separation from ourselves which mysticism exacts, and of which it believes man capable. Man, in order to communicate with absolute being, must go out of himself. It is necessary that thought should reject all determinate thought, and, in falling back within its own depths, should arrive at such an oblivion of itself, that consciousness should vanish or seem to vanish. But that is only an image of ecstasy; what it is in itself, no one knows; as it escapes all consciousness, it escapes memory, escapes reflection, and consequently all expression, all human speech. This philosophical mysticism rests upon a radically false notion of absolute being. By dint of wishing to free God from all the conditions of finite existence, one comes to deprive him of all the conditions of existence itself; one has such a fear that the infinite may have something in common with the finite, that he does not dare to recognize that being is common to both, save difference of degree, as if all that is not were not nothingness itself! Absolute being possesses absolute unity without any doubt, as it possesses absolute intelligence; but, once more, absolute unity without a real subject of inherence is destitute of all reality. Real and determinate are synonyms. What constitutes a being is its special nature, its essence. A being is itself only on the condition of not being another; it cannot but have characteristic traits. All that is, is such or such. Difference is an element as essential to being as unity itself. If, then, reality is in determination, it follows that God is the most determinate of beings. Aristotle is much more Platonic than Plotinus, when he says that God is the thought of thought,[89] that he is not a simple power, but a power effectively acting, meaning thereby that God to be perfect, ought to have nothing in himself that is not completed. To finite nature it belongs to be, in a certain sense, indeterminate, since being finite, it has always in itself powers that are not realized; this indetermination diminishes as these powers are realized. So true divine unity is not