Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/202

 limited. And if it be not limited, then it is not different from the infinite, but merges in it, is identical with it in infinitude, as it was before in finitude. Such is the abstract nature of this antithesis. It is necessary to retain this in the mind; to hold it fast is of absolute importance all through in regard to all forms of reflective consciousness and of philosophy. The antithesis itself vanishes when the two sides are absolutely opposed; both sides of the relation vanish into empty moments and that which is and remains is the unity of the two, in which they are abrogated and preserved.

The finite conceived of in its more concrete form is the Ego, and the infinite is at first what is beyond this finite, its negative. As the negative of the negative, however, the infinite is the affirmative. Consequently it is to the infinite that we ascribe affirmation, that which has being, what is beyond in relation to the Ego, to my self-consciousness, to my consciousness, as power, as will. But it has been remarked that it is the Ego itself which has here to begin with defined what is beyond as the affirmative; with this, however, that Ego is placed in contrast, the Ego, that is, which we before defined as the affirmative, in short, “I am immediate; I am one with myself.”

If consciousness determines itself as finite, and if beyond it is the infinite, this Ego makes the same reflection which we have made, namely, that that infinite is only a vanishing infinite, only a thought posited by myself. I am the one who produces that something beyond, and I determine myself by means of it as finite. Both are my product, in me they vanish; I am lord and master of this determination, and thus the second fact is posited, namely, that I am the affirmative which is placed beyond, I am the negation of the negation, I am that in which the antithesis vanishes, I am the act of reflection which annihilates both. The Ego thus, by means of its own act of reflection, destroys those self-dissolving antitheses.