Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/363

 transition possesses such an interest for us. The appearance of this state of contrast or opposition is a sign that subjectivity has reached the furthest point of its Being for self or independent Being, and has arrived at the condition of Totality, in which it knows itself as infinite and absolute in itself. The essential characteristic of revealed religion appears in the form of something by means of which Substance is Spirit. Of the two opposite sides one is represented by the subject itself which is the realisation of the Idea taken in its concrete meaning. The reason why this opposition seems so hard to overcome and seems to be infinite is that this particular side or aspect of reality, the side of subjectivity, the finite spirit in itself, has reached the point at which it is able to comprehend its infinity. It is only when the subject is a totality, when it has attained to this inner freedom, that it is Being; but then it is also the case that Being in this form is indifferent relatively to this subject, the subject is for itself, and Being stands above it as an Other which is indifferent to it. It is this which more particularly constitutes the reason why the opposition can appear to be of an infinite kind, and it is because of this and as an immediate result of this that there exists in all that has life an impulse to reconcile the opposing elements. The demand that these opposing elements should be reconciled is directly involved in the totality which belongs to them; but the abolition of the opposition has become infinitely difficult, because the opposition is of such an infinite kind, and because the Other is so entirely free, being something which exists in another sphere, in a sphere beyond.

Thus the grandeur of the standpoint of the modern world consists in this going down of the subject into itself whereby the finite knows itself to be the Infinite and is yet hampered with the antithesis or opposition which it is forced to solve. For the Infinite has an Infinite opposed to it, and thus the Infinite itself takes on the form of something finite, so that the subject,