 By striving for moral improvement, the individual relates herself to her ethical ideals. But since for Cohen our concept of ideal ethical laws just is our idea of God (or at least a component of our idea of God), an individual’s striving for moral improvement relates her to God. In Cohen’s terms, striving for moral improvement establishes a “correlation” between the individual and God. This correlation is a profoundly personal relationship: since the individual confesses and atones for her own particular sins, she relates herself to God in a way that is similarly particular to her. In relating herself to God, Cohen thinks, the individual thereby constitutes herself as a unique moral and religious self, and God becomes her “guide on the long road from sin to virtue” (Cohen 1919, 20).