Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/175

 natural; but yet, by using the expression “sin,” it means to raise into the sphere of the universal the natural element which lies in the conception of inheritance. The understanding, on the contrary, conceives of the relation in finite fashion, and thinks only of natural possessions or of hereditary disease. It is freely conceded that here, so far as the children are concerned, it is a matter of accident that parents should have property or should be tainted with disease; children may inherit noble rank, property, or evil without either merit or blame. If, then, we further reflect on the fact that the freedom of self-consciousness is superior to these conditions of chance, and that in the absolutely spiritual sphere of goodness each one has in that which he does his own deed, or, it may be, his own sin, it is easy to point out the contradiction involved if that which belongs absolutely to my freedom be supposed to have come upon me from elsewhere in a natural way, unconsciously and from the outside.

It is much the same when understanding attacks the idea of the Trinity. In this idea, too, the inner thought-relation is conceived of in an external fashion, for number is thought in the abstract form of externality. But here understanding holds fast the externality only, keeps to numeration, and finds each of the Three externally complete in relation to the Others. Now, if this quality of number be made the foundation of the relation, it is undoubtedly a complete contradiction that those who are perfectly external in relation to one another should at the same time be One.

c. Finally the category of necessity too comes in. In ordinary thought space exists, there is space. Philosophic thought desires to know the necessity of this. This necessity lies in the fact that in thought a content is not taken as being, as existing in simple determinateness, in this simple relation to self merely, but essentially in relation to an “Other,” and as a relation of elements which are mutually distinct.