Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/276

 of their one-sidedness, divest themselves of the one-sidedness attaching to the assertion of independent validity, and this discarding of the one-sidedness reveals itself outwardly in the fact that the individuals who have aimed at the realisation in themselves of a single separate moral power, perish.

Fate is what is devoid of thought, of the Notion, something in which justice and injustice disappear in abstraction; in tragedy, on the other hand, destiny moves within a certain sphere of moral justice. We find this truth expressed in the noblest form in the Tragedies of Sophocles. Fate and necessity are both referred to there. The destiny of individuals is represented as something incomprehensible, but necessity is not a blind justice; on the contrary, it is recognised as the true justice. And just because of this these Tragedies are the immortal spiritual productions of moral understanding and comprehension, the eternal patterns or models of the moral Notion. Blind destiny is something unsatisfying. In these Tragedies justice is grasped by thought. The collision between the two highest moral powers is set forth in a plastic fashion in that supreme and absolute example of tragedy, Antigone. In this case, family love, what is holy, what belongs to the inner life and to inner feeling, and which because of this is also called the law of the nether gods, comes into collision with the law of the State. Creon is not a tyrant, but really a moral power; Creon is not in the wrong; he maintains that the law of the State, the authority of government, is to be held in respect, and that punishment follows the infraction of the law. Each of these two sides realises only one of the moral powers, and has only one of these as its content; this is the element of one-sidedness here, and the meaning of eternal justice is shown in this, that both end in injustice just because they are one-sided, though at the same time both obtain justice too. Both are recognised as having a value of their own in the untroubled course of morality.