Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/339

 immediate is the abstract which has not as yet buried itself in itself, and has not as yet filled itself up by means of further reflection, has not yet made itself concrete. If we thus divest both these sides—Spirit as object generally, and nature, the mode of its reality—of what is concrete in the content, and hold fast simply the simple thought-determinateness, we have in this way an abstract determination of God and of the finite. These two sides are now opposed as infinite and finite—the one as pure Being, the other as determinate Being—as substantial and accidental, as universal and as particular. These determinations, it is true, are intrinsically different in some degree; thus the Universal is undoubtedly in itself much more concrete than Substance is; here, however, we can look at Substance as undeveloped, and it is then of no consequence which form we take in order to consider it more closely. Its relation to what confronts it is the essential thing.

This relation in which they are placed with regard to one another is present in their own nature quite as much as in religion, and is to be taken up in the first place in that aspect of it. In bringing himself into relation to the Infinite, man starts from the finite as his point of departure. Having the world before him, he has a feeling of the unattainable in it, for feeling, too, feels what is thought of, or what is thinkable. It does not suffice for what is ultimate, and he finds the world as an aggregate of finite things. In like manner, man knows himself to be something contingent, transient, and in this feeling he goes beyond the Particular and rises up to the Universal, to the One, which exists on its own account, to an Essence to which this contingency and conditioned character does not pertain, which rather is simply the Substance in contrast to this accidental element, and the Power owing to which this contingency is and is not. Now, religion just means that man seeks the basis of his want of self-dependence: not until he is in the presence of the Infinite does he find tranquillity. If we