Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/332

 means can negation be brought to bear on them, and only thus can they be kept in a condition of fear. The despot is one, a real present God, the singleness or individuality of will in the form of power exercising authority over all the other infinitely many single individualities.

The Emperor represents the Divinity, the divine essence, the Inner and Universal as it appears, and is revealed, and is actually present in the form of the singleness or particularity of the individual. This individual is the characterisation of Power advanced to the state of particularity, the descent of the Idea into the present, but it is a descent which means the loss on the part of the Idea of its inherent universality, of truth, of Being in-and-for self, and consequently of its divine nature. The universal has taken flight, and the Infinite is impressed in such a way on the finite that the finite is the subject of the proposition; this as something which has a fixed, permanent character, and is not negative, is placed within the Infinite.

This completion of finitude is thus pre-eminently the absolute misery and the absolute sorrow of Spirit, it is the opposition of Spirit to Spirit in its most complete form, and this state of opposition is not reduced to a state of reconciliation, this contradiction remains unsolved. But Spirit is what thinks, and so if it has lost itself in this reflection into itself as externality, in its character as thought it at the same time returns into itself through the loss of itself; it is reflected into itself, and in its depth as infinite form, as subjectivity,—but as subjectivity which thinks, and not as immediate subjectivity,—it has placed itself at the highest point which can be reached. In this abstract form it appears as philosophy, or speaking generally as the sorrow of virtue, as a longing and seeking for help.

The resolution and reconciliation of the opposing elements is what is everywhere demanded. This reconciliation becomes possible only when the external finitude,