Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/292

 of unconsciousness, where man does not know either good or evil, where that which he desires is not determined as either the one or the other; for if he has no knowledge of evil, he has no knowledge of good either.

The state of man is the state of imputation, of liability to imputation. Guilt is in the general sense imputation. By guilt we usually understand that a man has done evil; the term is taken in its evil sense. Guilt in the general sense, however, means that man may have something attributed or imputed to him, that what is done is his act of knowledge and of will.

The truth is that that original natural unity in its form as existence is not a state of innocence, but rather of barbarism, of passion, of savagery or wildness, in fact. Animals are not good, nor are they evil; but man in an animal condition is wild, is evil, is as he ought not to be. As he is by nature, he is as he ought not to be; what, on the contrary, he is, he must be by means of Spirit, by the knowing and willing of that which is right. This principle, that if man is in accordance with nature only, he is not as he ought to be, has been expressed by saying that man is evil by nature.

It is implied by this that man ought to contemplate himself as he is, so far as he merely lives in accordance with nature and follows his heart, that is to say, follows what merely springs up spontaneously.

We find in the Bible a well-known conception, called in an abstract fashion the Fall, and expressed in an outward and mythical shape. This idea is a very profound one, and represents what is not merely a kind of accidental history, but rather the everlasting necessary history of mankind.

If the Idea, that which has an absolute essential existence, be represented in a mythical way, in the form of an occurrence, inconsistency is unavoidable, and thus it could not fail to be the case that this representation too should have elements of inconsistency in it. The Idea