Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/340

 speak thus abstractly of religion, we already have the essential relation here, the transition from the finite to the Infinite. This transition is of such a kind that it is essentially involved in the nature of these determinations, in other words, in the Notion, and it may be observed here that it is possible to stop short at this determination. Taken in a strict sense, this transition may be conceived of in two different ways. We may regard it first as a transition from the finite to the Infinite as a “Beyond,” which is a more modern way of looking at it. Then, secondly, we may so conceive of it that the unity of the two is held fast, while the finite maintains itself in the Infinite. In the Religiou of Nature we find that any particular, immediate existence whatever, whether natural or spiritual, becomes a finite infinitely extended beyond its own range, and in the limited sense-perception of such an object the infinite Essence, free substantiality, is at the same time known. What, in fact, is here involved is that in the finite thing, the sun or the animal, and the like, infinitude is at the same time perceived, and that in the external manifoldness of the finite object we at the same time behold the inner infinite unity, divine substantiality. To consciousness the Infinite itself here becomes so really present in finite existence, the God becomes so present to it in this particularised existence, that this existence is not distinct from God, but rather is the mode in which God exists, implying that natural existence is preserved in immediate unity with Substance.

This advance from the finite to the Infinite is not only a fact, a matter of history in religion, but it is necessitated by the notion involved in the very nature of such a determination itself. This transition is thought itself; this means nothing else than that we know the Infinite in the finite, the universal in the particular. The consciousness of the universal, of the Infinite, is thought, and as this it is intrinsically mediation, a going forth—in fact, the abrogation and absorption of the external, of the