Furthermore we must remember that since, in that aspect of us which observes and studies, we are distinct personalities, we are obliged, in so observing and studying, to regard things as outside of ourselves. This is the core of the whole difficulty. At bottom, the relativity of human knowledge does not depend on the fact that time, space, and causality are, as Kant has taught us, modes of thought imposed upon our ‘I,’ with nothing external answering to them; it goes deeper, it depends on the ultimate fact that I _am_ an ‘I,’ and _therefore_ separate (as such) from what I observe, and _therefore_ only capable of studying my own states as affected by external things, not the very things themselves. Real knowledge, then, must consist in getting out of this prison of ‘I’-hood and entering into actual union with what we observe. Could we do that, we should at once live not in our ‘selves’ but in the Whole. The question then is, whether it is ever possible so to escape, and how? We must note, however, that no one who has done this could ever tell us precisely what he has done. For the moment he begins to put his experiences into an intellectual form, the laws of the mind reassert themselves, things externalize themselves again, the ‘I’ reappears, the gulf yawns again between subject and object. And yet the instinctive language of man shows that he does regard it as possible to _lose himself_ in the contemplation of something transcending his powers of ordinary intellectual apprehension. Why should he not? If a transcendent Reality exists, as it must, then the faculty of entering into conscious relation with it is one which Time would surely some day bring to birth.