Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/260

 to be annulled. And assuredly the natural will is not the will as it ought to be, for it ought to be free, and the will of passion is not free. By nature Spirit is not as it ought to be; by means of freedom only does it become such. That the will is by nature evil is the form under which this truth is presented here. But man is only guilty if he adhere to this his natural character. Justice, morality, are not the natural will, for in it a man is selfish, his desire is only toward his individual life as such. It is by means of worship, accordingly, that this evil element is to be annulled. Man is not innocent in the sense that he is neither good nor bad. What results from the freedom of man is not natural innocence of this kind. But man becomes educated to freedom, which has an essential character only when it wills the essential will and this will represents what is good, right, moral.

Man is to become free, that is to say, upright and moral, and he is to become such by the way of education. According to the view here referred to, this kind of education is expressive of the overcoming of the evil element, and as thus regarded it is posited in the sphere of consciousness, while education takes place in an unconscious manner. The abrogation of the antithesis of good and evil has its place in this form of worship; the natural man is represented as evil, but the evil element is the aspect of separation and estrangement, and this estrangement is to be negated. There is also present the assumption that reconciliation is potentially accomplished; in worship a man creates this assurance for himself, and lays hold upon the potentially completed reconciliation. It is, however, already perfected in and through God, and it is this divine reality which man is to take to himself as his own.

But this appropriation of reconciliation takes place by the negation of the estrangement, and therefore by means of renunciation. And now the question arises, What then actually is it that man is to renounce? Man is to