Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/207

 infinite. Consequently this infinitude is itself finitude. This particularity of my finite being—my immediate personality—has yet to be separated from this affirmation, from this infinite. It is Reflection itself which is par excellence what separates; but here it neglects its function of separating and distinguishing, and arrives at a unity which is, however, only a finite unity. Reflection here fails to disjoin the immediate particularity of the Ego, of the individual unit, from the Infinite and Affirmative. And instead of merging the individual, which in itself is without support, in universality and getting a grasp of affirmation in its absolute universality in which it includes the individual, it conceives of particularity itself as being in an immediate way the universal. Here lies the deficiency of this point of view. Contradictions can only be criticised if we trace them back to the ultimate thought on which they rest.

Such is the standpoint of the present time, and philosophy enters into a peculiar relation with it. If we compare this point of view with the religious ideas of earlier times, we easily observe that this religious consciousness had formerly a content existing on its own account, a content which defined the nature of God. It was the point of view of truth and of dignity. The highest duty was to know God, to worship Him in spirit and in truth; and the salvation or perdition, the absolute worth or worthlessness of man was bound up with his knowledge of this content, and his acceptance of it as true. At the present day to know truth, to know God, is not regarded as man’s highest endeavour, and consequently right and duty are unknown. All objective content has evaporated, and all that is left is this pure, formal subjectivity. This point of view expressly implies that I am by nature good; not that I am good by means of my own act, or by means of my will, but that I am good in being unconscious. The opposite position implies on the contrary that I am only good by means of my self-conscious spiritual activity, by my