Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/152

 undeveloped form in feeling; but it is quite another thing to say that this content as such belongs to feeling as such. Such a content as God, is a content which is self-existent and universal; and in like manner the content of right and duty is a characteristic of rational will.

I am will, I am not desire only; I have not only inclination;—“I” is the Universal. As will, however, I am in my freedom, in my Universality itself, in the Universality of my self-determination; and if my will be rational, then its determining is in fact an universal one, a determining in accordance with the pure Notion. The rational will is very different from the contingent will, from willing according to accidental impulses or inclinations. The rational will determines itself in accordance with its notion or conception; and the notion, the substance of the will, is pure freedom. And all determinations of the will which are rational are developments of freedom, and the developments which result from the determinations are duties.

This is the content which belongs to rationality; it is determination by means of, in accordance with, the pure Notion, and therefore belongs in like manner to thought. Will is only rational in so far as it involves thought. The popular idea that will and intelligence represent two different provinces, and that will can be rational, and so moral, without thought, must therefore be relinquished. As regards God it has already been observed that this content in like manner belongs to thought, that the region in which this content is apprehended as well as produced is thought.

Now, though we have designated feeling as the sphere in which the Being of God is to be immediately exhibited, we have not in that region found the Being, the Object—God—in the form in which we sought for it; that is to say, we have not found it there as free, independent Being, Being in and for self. God is, He is independent and self-existent, is free; we do not find this independence,