Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/123

 finite world, finite consciousness. Now if we are to begin from this as the immediate, the finite, the untrue, and in fact as an object of our knowledge, and as immediately apprehended by us in its definite qualitative existence, if we begin in this manner from what is First, we find that it shows itself, as we proceed, not to be what it directly presents itself as being, but is seen to be something which destroys itself, which appears as becoming, as moving on to something else. Therefore it is not our reflection and study of the subject, our judgment, which tells us that the finite with which we begin is founded on something that is true. It is not we who bring forward its foundation. On the contrary, the movement of the finite itself shows that it loses itself in something other, in something higher than itself. We follow the object as it returns of itself to the fountain of its true being.

Now, while the object which forms the starting-point perishes in this, its true Source, and sacrifices itself, this does not mean that it has vanished in this process. Its content is, on the contrary, posited in its ideal character. We have an example of this absorption and ideality in consciousness. I relate myself to an object, and then contemplate it as it is. The object, which I at once distinguish from myself, is independent; I have not made it, it did not wait for me in order to exist, and it remains although I go away from it. Both, I and the object, are therefore two independent things, but consciousness is at the same time the relation of these two independent things to each other, a relation in which they appear as one. In that I have knowledge of the object, these two, I and the Other, exist for me in this my simple determinate character. If we rightly grasp what takes place here, we have not only the negative result that the oneness and independence of the two is done away with. The annulling which takes place is not only empty negation, but the negation of those two things from which I