Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/211

 sense quite other than that in which the same is true of the world. What is experienced in religion is God, He who is thought, and it is only in thought that God is worshipped. In the religion of the Parsis we had dualism, and the idea of contrast implied in this we have in the Jewish religion as well. The contrast or opposition does not, however, occur in God, but is found in the spirit which is His “Other.” God is Spirit, and what He has produced, namely, the world, is also Spirit, and it is in this latter that He is in Himself the “Other” of His essence. What is involved in finitude is, that in it difference appears as division. In the world God is at home with Himself; it is good, for the Nothing or non-existence which belongs to it, and out of which the world has been created, is the Absolute itself. The world, however, as representing this first act of judgment, of separation, on God’s part, does not get the length of being absolute contrast. It is only Spirit which is capable of being this absolute contrast, and it is this which gives it its depth. The contrast or opposition exists within the other spirit, which is consequently the finite spirit. This is the place where the contest between good and evil goes on, and it is the place, too, in which this fight must be fought out. All these characteristics arise out of the nature of the Notion. This opposition is a difficult point, for it constitutes the contradiction, which may be stated thus: the Good is not contradictory in virtue of its own nature, but rather it is by means of evil that contradiction first enters, and it occurs only in evil. But then the question arises: How has evil come into the world? At this stage such a question has both meaning and interest. In the religion of the Parsis this question cannot occasion any difficulty, for there the Evil exists quite as much as the Good. Both have sprung from something which is devoid of all definite character. Here, on the other hand, where God is power and the one Subject, and where everything depends for its existence