Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/234

 This is the kind of mediation which belongs to freedom. Freedom is not pure negation, it is not merely an act of flight and surrender. Freedom of that sort is not yet the true affirmative freedom, but is negative freedom only. It is the negation of what is in a merely natural state in so far as this itself exists as something negative, which first gives the affirmative determination of freedom. Since the “Other,” namely, the world, finite consciousness, with its servitude and contingent character, is negated, it follows that in this act of mediation the determination of freedom is to be found. The elevation or exaltation of Spirit is thus this particular elevation above the state of mere naturalness, but it is an elevation in which, if it is to become freedom, the subjective spirit must also be free in its own nature, for itself. This accordingly is at first seen only in the subject or individual. “God is the God of free men.”

It is, however, equally true that any further determination or characterisation takes place quite as much within the nature of God. God is Spirit, but He is Spirit in any essential sense only in so far as He is known to be the self-diremption of Himself, the producer of differentiation within Himself, the eternal act of creation, and in such a way that this creation of an “Other” is a return to Himself, a return to the knowledge of Himself. It is thus that God is a God of free men. Since it belongs to the essential character of God Himself that He should be in His very nature the “Other” of Himself, and that this “Other” is a determination or quality within His own nature, so that He thereby returns to Himself and the human element is reconciled to God, it follows that we thus get the determination which is expressed by saying that Humanity is itself in God. Thus man knows that what is human is a moment of the Divine itself, and consequently he stands in a free relation to God. For that to which he stands related as to his own essential being has the essential characteristics of humanity in itself, and