Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/190

 unity with himself, the feeling of himself, of his relation to himself. The feeling of a negation in himself contradicts this. The subject, too, feels itself to be a power as against its negation, and removes this accidental element, that is, satisfies its want. All impulses in man, as in the lower animals, are this affirmation of the self, and the animal thus places itself in opposition to the negation in itself. Life consists in the abolition of limitation, and in this it reconciles itself with itself. This need in itself at the same time appears as an object outside of it, over which it obtains mastery, and thus reinstates its Self.

Thus the limitation of finiteness only exists for us in so far as we are above and beyond it. This reflection is too abstract to be made from the standpoint of consciousness, which we are now considering, where consciousness, on the contrary, remains within its limitation. The object is its Not-Being. That the object is thus set down as different from the Ego, implies that it is not that which the Ego is. I am the finite. Thus the infinite is what is above and beyond the limits; it is something other than the limited; it is the unlimited, the infinite. Thus we have finite and infinite.

This already implies, however, that the two sides are in relation with one another, and it remains to be seen how this relation determines itself. This is done in quite a simple way.

This infinite, as being my object, is the Not-finite, Not-particular, Not-limited, the Universal; the finite in relation to the infinite is posited as the negative, dependent, that which melts away in relation to the infinite. When the two are brought together, a unity comes into existence through the abolition and absorption of the finite in fact, which cannot maintain itself as against the infinite. Expressed in terms of feeling, this condition is that of fear, of dependence. Such is the relation of the two, but it has another characteristic besides.

On the one hand, I determine myself as the finite; on