Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/311

 the sphere of finitude, exists alongside of it, and gives itself up to the pursuit of its own ends, and is left to its own interests without any influence being exercised upon it by the Infinite, the Eternal, and the True—that is, without there being any passing over into the Infinite within the sphere of the finite, without the finite coming to truth and morality by the mediation of the Infinite, and so, too, without the Infinite being brought into the region of present reality through the mediation of the finite. We do not require here to enter upon the consideration of the lame conclusion that the one who has knowledge, namely, Man, must be absolute in order to comprehend the Absolute, because the same thing applies to faith or immediate knowledge as being also an inner act of comprehension, if not of the absolute Spirit of God, at all events of the Infinite. If this knowledge is so afraid of the concrete element in its object, then this object must at least have some meaning for it. It is really the non-concrete which has few characteristics or none at all, that is the abstract, the negative, what is least of all, the Infinite in short.

But then it is just by means of this miserable abstraction of the Infinite that ordinary thought repels the attempt to comprehend the Infinite, and for the simple reason that the present and actual Man, the human spirit, human reason, is definitely opposed to the Infinite in the form of a fixed abstraction of the finite. Ordinary thought would more readily allow that the human spirit, thought, or reason, can comprehend the Absolutely-necessary, for this latter is thus directly declared and stated to be the negative as opposed to its Other, namely, the contingent, which has on its part a necessity too, external necessity that is. What accordingly can be clearer than that Man, who moreover is, that is to say, is something positive or affirmative, cannot comprehend his negative? And conversely, is it not still more clear that since his Being, his affirmation, is finitude, and therefore negation.