Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/124

 started. The non-existence here is thus only the nonexistence of the independence of the two—the non-existence in which both determinations are abrogated, yet preserved and ideally contained.

Should we now desire to see how in this manner the natural universe and the spiritual universe return to their truth in the religious standpoint, the detailed consideration of this return would constitute the whole circle of the philosophical sciences. We should have to begin here with Nature; it is the immediate; Spirit would in that case be opposed to Nature, and both, in so far as they confront one other as independent, are finite.

We may here, accordingly, distinguish between two ways of considering the matter.

In the first place, we might consider what Nature and Spirit are in themselves, or ideally. This would show that potentially they are identical in the one Idea, and both only reflect what is one and the same, or, we might say, that they have their one root in the Idea. But this would still be an abstract way of looking at them, being limited to what these objects are potentially, and not implying that they are conceived of according to the Idea and reality. The distinctions which essentially belong to the Idea would be left unregarded. This absolute Idea is the element of necessity, is the essence of both Nature and Spirit, and in it what constitutes their difference, their limit and finiteness, drops away. The Essence of Spirit and of Nature is one and the same, and in this identity they are nothing more than what they are in their separation and qualitative existence. It is, however, our act of knowledge which, in this way of looking at them, strips these two of their difference, and does away with their finiteness. It is outside of these limited worlds that they are limited, and that their limit disappears in the Idea which is their unity. This disappearance of the limit is an abstracting from it which takes place in our act of cognition or knowledge. We