Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/31

 remain unalterably independent in relation to each other. The Positive is not the same as the Negative, as, for example, cause-effect.

But, so far as the Notion is concerned, it is equally true that these differences cancel themselves. It is just because they are differences that they remain finite, and it is the nature of the Understanding to stick to the finite, and even when it is dealing with the Infinite itself it has the Infinite on the one side and the finite on the other.

The real truth is that the finite, and the Infinite which is put in contrast with the finite, have no true existence, but are themselves merely transitory. So far this is a secret for the sensuous way of conceiving of things and for the Understanding, and they struggle against the element of rationality in the Idea. Those who oppose the doctrine of the Trinity are men who are guided merely by their senses and understanding.

The Understanding is equally powerless to grasp the meaning of anything else whatever, or to get at the truth regarding anything. Animal life also exists as Idea, as a unity of the notion or conception of the soul and bodily form. For the Understanding each of these exists for itself. They are undoubtedly different, but it is equally their nature to abolish this difference. Life is simply this perennial process. What has life exists; it has impulses, needs, and consequently it has within itself difference, and this originates within it. There thus comes to be a contradiction, and the Understanding takes these differences as implying that the contradiction does not cancel itself; when they are brought into relation with each other nothing exists but just the contradiction, which cannot be cancelled.

The contradiction is there; it cannot cease to exist if the elements of difference are held to be perennial elements of difference, just because it is the fact of this difference that is insisted upon. What has life has certain needs,