Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/213

 definite mode of my existence as pure thinking. What is further to be observed is that in devotion, in this relation to the universal Substance, I am reflected upon myself. I distinguish myself from this Object, and it from myself, for I have to yield myself up. In this lies the consciousness of myself; and in so far as I merely perform the act of devotion in yielding myself up to God, I am at the same time only as it were a reflection out of God into myself. How then am I determined in this respect, “I,” who again appear? Here I am determined as finite in the true manner, finite as distinguished from this Object, as the particular over against the universal, as the accidental in reference to this Substance, as a moment, as something distinguished, which at the same time is not independent, but has renounced itself and knows itself to be finite. Thus therefore I do not go beyond the consciousness of myself, and this arises from the fact that the universal Object is now potentially thought and has the content within itself; it is substance in motion within itself, and as an inward process in which it begets its content, is not empty, but is absolute fulness. All particularity belongs to it; as universal it overlaps or includes me in itself, and thus I look upon myself as finite, as being a moment in this life, as that which has its particular being, its permanent existence in this substance only, and in its essential moments. And thus I am not only potentially but also actually and really, posited as finite. For that very reason I do not preserve myself as immediate, as affirmative.

Having hitherto considered, in a concrete way, the attitude of the Ego to the universal Substance, what now remains to be considered is the abstract relation of the finite to the infinite generally.

In Reflection, the finite stands opposed to the infinite in such a way that the finite is doubled. What is true is the indissoluble unity of the two. This it is which we have just considered in a more concrete form as the