The first implies that we are moving around the object and depends upon the viewpoint we take of it and on the symbols we employ to express ourselves. The second implies that we enter into the thing and is decided by no viewpoint and no symbols. For example, say that I am talking with someone and taking notes describing everything they do and say. I note their feelings, thoughts, memories, attitudes, gestures, etc., etc. All of these things that I am noting about the person are so many points of view from which I observe him or her. All of the words I use to describe the person are symbols or signs by which I translate the person, expressing him or her symbolically. Such points of view and symbols always leave me outside the person. They give me only what he or she has in common with other people and which I already know. Hence I am left in the relative. Being outside the person in this way I cannot perceive what is essential and unique in the person, for what constitutes the person, what is simply his or her self, is internal by definition and can only be experienced by me if I were to be able and momentarily identify myself with the person. However, if I am able to coincide with the person in such a way I transcend the relative and attain the absolute.
Relative knowledge is possessed through analysis and absolute knowledge is possessed through intuition. As mentioned, in analysis we are always outside the object and left to adopt varying points of view of it, from differing angles we employ symbols or concepts to represent the object, thereby translating it into elements already known, i.e, the relative. To analyze is to be limited to this type of engagement: a translation into symbols, and always remains imperfect in comparison with the object the symbols try and express. For no matter how expressive, a symbol can never be that which it expresses or represents.
