Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/193

 narrowly, and we must see what constitutes its general character, and estimate what is essential in it.

There is in it the determinateness of my finiteness, of my relativity. The infinite stands over against it, but as something beyond. My affirmation, my determination as existing, alternates with the negation which I am essentially determined as being. We shall see that both negation and affirmation come to coincide, and the absoluteness of the Ego will be seen to issue as the result.

1. There is here on the one hand a going out of my finiteness to a Higher; on the other, I am determined as the negative of this Higher. The latter remains an Other, which cannot be determined by me, which is unattained by me, in so far as determination is to get an objective sense. What is present is only this going out on my part, this aiming to reach what is remote; I remain on this side, as it were, have a yearning after what is beyond the present and actual.

2. It is to be remarked that this reaching out towards something beyond the actual is absolutely and solely mine. It is my deed, my aiming, my emotion, my desire and endeavour. If I make use of the predicates all-good, almighty, as characterising that something beyond, they have a meaning in me only, they have a subjective and not an objective meaning, and they belong absolutely and solely to that aiming of mine. My absolute fixed finiteness hinders me from reaching that something beyond. To relinquish my finiteness and to reach it would be one and the same thing. The interest or motive not to reach that something beyond, and the interest I have in maintaining myself, are identical.

3. It becomes clear from this that the twofold negativity, that of myself as finite and that of an Infinite over against me, has its seat in the Ego itself, and is only, on the one hand, a division in myself—the fact, the determination that I am the negative; on the other hand,