Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/259

 the abrogation of his immediate individuality, through which abrogation he produces absolute individuality in himself, and is consequently free in himself. This freedom exists as the movement of absolute Spirit in him by the abrogation of the natural and finite. Man, in arriving at a consciousness of the infinity of his spirit, has brought into view the element of division in its most extreme form in regard both to Nature generally and to himself: it is in this division that the domain of true freedom has its origin. Through this knowledge of absolute Spirit the opposition between infinite and finite has entered in in its most extreme form, and this division is the bearer of reconciliation. It is no longer asserted here that man is good and is reconciled with absolute Spirit from his birth, that is, in accordance with his immediate nature; but, on the contrary, that just because his conception is the absolutely free unity, that natural existence of his directly proves itself to be in a state of opposition, and consequently to be something which is to be abrogated and absorbed. Nature, the heart in its immediate state, is what has to be relinquished, because that moment does not leave Spirit free, and as natural spirit it is not posited by its own act. If the natural element be retained, the spirit is not free. Accordingly, what it is, it is not by its own act, or on its own account, but it finds itself so. In that higher sphere, on the other hand, all that man ought to be lies involved in the domain of freedom. Here, then, worship essentially passes over into the region of inner life; here the heart must break, that is to say, the natural will, the natural consciousness is to be relinquished. On the one hand, too, there are actual sins, of which man has to repent, sins which, as single acts, have a contingent character, and do not concern human nature as such. But, on the other hand, in the abstraction of finitude and infinitude—in that general opposition—the finite, as such, is reputed to be evil. That separation which is originally inherent in man has