The philosophic endeavour to cognize the whole system of things by referring all events to their causes appears to him to be from the outset doomed to failure.
In it we cognize our own inner life as affected by the non-ego.
He distinguished between knowledge of actual objects and the divine inspiration by which we cognize the being and existence of God.
The senses with their changing and inconsistent reports cannot cognize this unity; it is by thought alone that we can pass beyond the false appearances of sense and arrive at the knowledge of being, at the fundamental truth that "the All is One."