Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/85

 concrete Being is itself still abstract. In order that the Good be not abstract, there must be the development of form, the positing of the moments of the Notion. In order to exist as rational Idea, to be known as Spirit, its determinations, the negative element, the distinctions as representing its powers must be posited, known, by means of the thought in it.

The Good may be made use of in various ways, or, to put it otherwise, human beings have good intentions. Here the question presents itself, “What is good?” There is a demand for further definition and explanation of the Good. Here we still have Good as abstract, as something one-sided, and consequently as an absolute antithesis to an Other, and this Other is Evil. In this simple relation the negative is not as yet comprehended within what rightly belongs to it.

We thus have two principles, the well-known Oriental dualism—the realms of good and evil. This is the grand opposition which has here reached this universal abstraction. In the varied character of the deities previously referred to, there is undoubtedly manifoldness, difference; but the fact that this duality has become the universal principle is quite another thing, for the difference confronts itself as this dualism.

The Good is indeed the True, the Powerful, but is at war with Evil in such a way that Evil stands over against it as an absolute principle, and remains standing over against it. The evil ought, it is true, to be overcome, to be equated, but what ought to be is not. The ought-to-be, the ideal, is a force which cannot realise itself; it is a certain weakness and impotence.

This dualism, understood as distinction or difference in its entire universality, is the interest alike of religion and philosophy, and it is, in fact, when put in terms of Thought that this opposition acquires its universality. At the present time dualism is a form of thought too; but when we speak of dualism, the forms referred to are