Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/142

 we have not any content, anything definite, whereby to express what is wise. The end is potential, is yet undetermined in the notion of God, and so we have to take a second and further step, and show that the end must become actual, must be realised. There must, therefore, be determination in it, but the determination is not as yet developed. The determination as such, the development, has not as yet taken an actual form within the Divine Essence, and for this reason the determination is finite, external, an accidental or particular end. In so far as it exists, it exists in an undefined form in the divine notion, but so far as it is determined it is an accidental and entirely limited end; or, to put it otherwise, what constitutes it is something outside of the divine notion, an end which can be distinguished from it, not the divine end in all its completeness in and for itself, i.e., not an end which would be developed from its own inner nature, and would in its particular forms express the determinateness of the divine notion.

In studying the Religion of Nature, we saw that in it goodness was as universal as power; but speaking generally, it does not go beyond expressing the idea of substantial immediate identity with the Divine Essence, and all things accordingly are good and full of light. Here, in the determination of subjectivity, of Power which has independent existence, the end is distinguished from the notion, and the definite form given to the end is just for this reason merely accidental, because the difference has not yet been taken back into the divine notion, is not yet considered as equivalent to it. Here, therefore, we have only ends which, so far as their contents are concerned, are finite, and are not as yet adequate to express the divine notion. Finite self-consciousness is thus, to begin with, the region in which they are realised. This is the fundamental characteristic of the standpoint we have got to.