Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/203

 with, be called the theoretic end. Its more definite form is that of the practical end, the peculiarly real end, which realises itself in the world, but always in the spiritual world.

Second Determination.—This essential end is the moral end, morality, signifying that Man, in what he does, has present to his mind what is in accordance with law, what is right. This element of law of what is right is the Divine element, and in so far as it belongs to the world, and is present in finite consciousness, it is something which has been posited by God.

God is the Universal. The man who guides himself and his will in accordance with this universal is the free man, and thus represents the universal will, and not his own particular morality. The doing of what is right is here the fundamental characteristic, walking before God, freedom from selfish ends, the righteousness which has worth before God.

Man does what is thus declared to be right in reference to God with a view to the glory of God. This right-doing has its seat in the will, in the inner nature of man; and, in contrast to this exercise of will in reference to God, we have the natural state of existence, of Man, and of what acts.

Just as we saw that in Nature there was a broken up or disjointed state of things, that God existed independently while Nature had Being, but was yet something in subjection, so too we see exactly the same distinction in the human spirit; we have right-doing as such, then, again the natural existence of Man. This, however, is equally something determined by means of the spiritual relation of the will, just as Nature in general is something posited by the absolute Spirit.

The natural existence of Man, his outward worldly existence, is placed in direct relation to what is inward. If this will of his is a substantial, essential will, action is right action; and so, too, Man’s external existence