Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/125

 do away with the form of its finiteness, and come to its truth. This way of conceiving of the matter is so far rather of a subjective kind, and that which presents itself as being the truth of this finiteness is the self-existing Idea—the Substance, according to Spinoza, or the Absolute, as it was conceived of by Schelling.

Both natural things and the spiritual world are shown to be finite, so that what is true is the vanishing of their limits in Absolute Substance, and the recognition of the fact that this substance is the absolute identity of the two, of Subjective and Objective, of Thought and Being. But Substance is merely this identity. The specific form and quality is taken away by us, and does not appear in Substance, which is therefore rigid, cold, motionless necessity, in which knowledge, subjectivity, cannot find satisfaction, because it does not recognise in it its own vitality and distinctions. This phenomenon is seen in all ordinary acts of devotion. We rise above finiteness, we forget it; but yet it is not truly done away with simply because we have forgotten it.

The second method consists in a recognition of the necessity by which the self-abrogation of the finite, and the positing of the Absolute, take place objectively. It must be shown of Nature and Spirit that they, in accordance with their notion, abrogate or annul themselves, and their finiteness must not be taken from them merely by a subjective removal of their limits. Here then we have the movement of thought, which is likewise the movement of the thing itself, or true reality, and it is the very process of Nature and of Spirit out of which proceeds the True.

a. We have now, therefore, to consider Nature as it really is in itself—as the process of which the transition to Spirit is the ultimate truth, so that Spirit proves itself to be the truth of Nature. It is the essential character of Nature to sacrifice itself, to consume itself, so that the Psyche comes forth out of this burnt-offering