Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/291

 the form of the existence, or the mode of the state only, which is in question. The Notion is the inner element, the Potentiality, which has not yet, however, entered upon existence. The question therefore presents itself, What is there to prevent us from believing that the Potentiality has been present from the beginning as actual existence? What prevents this is the nature of Spirit. Spirit is only what it makes itself become. This bringing out of that which it potentially is, is the positing of the Notion in existence.

The Notion must realise itself, and the realisation of the Notion, the active processes by means of which it actualises itself, and the shapes and manifestations of this actualisation which are at hand, have an outward appearance which is something different from what the simple Notion is within itself. The Notion, the Potentiality, is not a state, an existence. On the contrary, it is to the realisation of the Notion that states, existence, are due, and this realisation must be of a quite different kind from what is contained in that description of Paradise.

Man exists essentially as Spirit; Spirit does not, however, exist in an immediate manner. It is, on the contrary, its essential nature to be for itself, or self-conscious, to be free, to place the natural over against itself, to escape from its immersion in nature, to sever itself from nature, and only through and as following on this severance, to reconcile itself with nature, and not with nature alone, but with its own Essence too, with its truth.

It is this unity, which thus springs from division or dualism, which is alone self-conscious, true unity; it is not that state of natural unity which is a oneness not worthy of Spirit, not the unity of Spirit.

If that state be designated the state of innocence, it may appear objectionable to say that man must come out of the state of innocence and become guilty. The state of innocence is that state in which there is nothing good and nothing evil for man: it is the condition of animals,