Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/343

 and this when developed is an Other, and is here the Infinite.

The leading thought is that the finite is something whose nature consists in this, that it has not its Being in its own self, but has that which it is in an Other, and this Other is the Infinite. The very nature of the finite it is to have the Infinite as its truth; that which it is, is not it itself, but is its opposite, the Infinite.

This advance is necessary—it is posited in the notion; the finite is inherently finite—that is its nature. The rising up to God is thus just what we have seen it to be; this finite self-consciousness does not keep itself limited to the finite; it forsakes it, relinquishes it, and conceives the Infinite. This takes place in the process of rising up to God, and is the rational element therein. This advance is the innermost, the purely logical element, yet so conceived it only expresses one side of the Whole: the finite vanishes in the Infinite; it is its nature to posit the Infinite as its truth; the Infinite, which has thus come to be in this manner, is, however, itself as yet only the abstract Infinite; it is only negatively determined as the Not-finite. The essential nature of the Infinite, too, on its part, as being this merely negatively determined Infinite, is to annul itself and to determine itself; in fact, to annul and absorb its negation, to posit itself on the one hand as affirmation, and on the other to annul in like manner its abstraction, and to particularise itself and posit the moment of finitude within itself. The finite vanishes at first in the Infinite; it is not; its Being is only a semblance of Being. We have then the Infinite before us as an abstract Infinite only, enclosed within its own sphere; and it belongs to its real nature to abolish this abstraction. This results from the notion or conception of the Infinite. It is the negation of the negation—the negation relating itself to itself—and this is absolute affirmation, and at the same