Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/142

 in which it confronts the Good in virtue of its own essential nature, and in which infinite progress is what is highest of all.

If we get no further than the idea of what ought to be, then effort becomes endless, and the solution of the problem is removed infinitely far away.

Here, on the contrary, the contradiction is already implicitly solved; evil is known as something which in the Spirit is virtually and absolutely overcome, and in virtue of the fact of its being thus overcome the subject has only to make its will good, and evil, the evil action, disappears.

Here there is the consciousness that there is no sin which cannot be forgiven if the natural will is surrendered, unless the sin against the Holy Spirit, the denial of Spirit; for it alone is the power which can cancel everything.

Very many difficulties arise in connection with this point, and they all spring from the conception of Spirit and of freedom. On the one hand, Spirit is regarded as universal Spirit, and, on the other hand, as Man’s independent existence, as the independent existence of the single individual. It is necessary to say that it is the divine Spirit which effects regeneration; this is divine free grace, for all that is divine is free; it is not fate, it is not destiny. On the other hand, however, there is the self of the soul existing in a positive way, and it is sought accordingly to ascertain how much Man’s share in the matter is; a Velleitas, a Nisus is left to him, but persistence in firmly remaining in such a relation is itself unspiritual. The first condition of Being, the Being of the Self, is potentially the Notion, potentially Spirit, and what has to be abolished is the form of its immediacy, of its isolated, particular, independent Being or Being-for-self. This cancelling of self and coming to self on the part of the Notion is not, however, limited, universal Spirit. The act implied in belief in implicit