Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/196

 Were it further developed, all the views characteristic of the present time would coincide with it, as, for example, that goodness exists only in my conviction, and that upon this conviction my morality is based; and again, that what is good rests or depends entirely upon my nature. My conviction is sufficient so far as I am concerned. That I know the action to be good is enough, so far as I am concerned. There is no need for having a further consciousness of the substantial or essential nature of the action. If, however, it depend upon that consciousness alone, I can, strictly speaking, commit no fault at all, for to myself I am only affirmative, while the division or dualism remains formal, a semblance of division, which does not disturb my essential inner life. My yearning, my emotion, is what is substantial. This point of view embraces all the opinions of recent times since the Kantian philosophy, which was the first to advance this belief in goodness.

Such is the standpoint of subjective consciousness. This consciousness develops the antitheses which concern consciousness, but which remain in it, and which it holds under its control, because it is the Affirmative.

We have now to consider what finiteness itself is, and what true relation the finite has to the infinite. That the human spirit is finite we hear daily affirmed. We shall speak of finiteness in the popular sense first, the sense suggested when it is said that man is finite, and then we shall use it in the true sense, which represents the rational view of it.

There are three forms in which finiteness appears, namely, in sensuous existence, in reflection, and in the mode in which it exists in Spirit and for Spirit,

($$\alpha$$.) Finiteness in Sensuous Existence.

That man is finite means, in the first place, that I as man stand in relation to what is other than myself. There is actually present an Other, the negative of myself, with which I am in connection, and that constitutes my