Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/291

 into something external in which it can no longer be disturbed. The reason why we men are unhappy, or unsatisfied, or simply fretful, is because of the division within us, that is, because of the contradiction represented by the fact that these impulses, aims, and interests, or simply these demands, wishes, and reflections are in us, and that at the same time our existence has in it what is the Other, the antithesis of these. This disunion or unrest in us can be removed in a twofold manner. On the one hand, our outward existence, our condition, the circumstances which affect us and in which our interests in general are involved, may be brought into harmony with the roots of their interests in ourselves, a harmony which is experienced in the form of happiness and satisfaction. On the other hand, in the event of there being a disunion between the two, and consequently in the event of unhappiness, instead of satisfaction there is a natural repose of the heart, or, where the injury goes deeper and affects an energetic will and its just claims, the heroic strength of the will produces at the same time a contentment by taking kindly to the actual state of things and by submitting to what actually is, and this is a yielding in which the mind does not in a one-sided way let go its hold on what is external, circumstances, or the actual condition of things, because they have been overcome and are overpowered, but which gives up by an act of its own will its inner determinateness and allows it to go. This freedom of abstraction is not without an element of pain; but the pain is brought down to the level of natural pain, and has not in it the pain of penitence, the pain attaching to the rebellious sense of wrong-doing, just as it has no consolation or hope. But then it is not in need of consolation, for consolation presupposes a claim which is still maintained and asserted and does not in one way really satisfy, while looked at in another way, it seeks a compensation, and in the act of hoping, a desire for something has been kept in reserve.