Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/357

 forced to rise to the thought of a higher determination and a higher end, when we thus lament the misfortune which has befallen so much that is of high value, and mourn its disappearance. We must regard all those ends, however much they interest us, as finite and subordinate, and ascribe to their finitude the destruction which overtakes them. But this universal end is not discoverable in experience, and thus the general character of the transition is altered, for the transition means that we start from something given, that we reason syllogistically from what we find in experience. But then what we find present in experience is characterised by limitation. The supreme end is the Good, the general final-end of the world. Reason has to regard this end as the absolute final-end of the world, and must look upon it as being based purely on the essential nature of reason, beyond which Spirit cannot go. Reason in the form of thought is, however, recognised as being the source of this end. The next step accordingly is that this end should show that it is accomplished in the world. But the Good is what has a determinate character in-and-for-itself by means of reason; and to this, Nature stands opposed, partly as physical Nature which follows its own course and its own laws, and partly as the natural element in Man, his particular ends which are opposed to the Good. If we go by what our senses show us, we find much that is good in the world, but also an infinite quantity of evil, and we would just have to reckon up the amount of evil, and the amount of good which does not attain realisation, in order to discover which preponderates. The Good, however, is something absolutely substantial; it belongs to the very essence of its nature that it should be realised. But it is something which merely ought to be real, for it cannot reveal itself in experience. It stops short with being something which ought to exist, something which is a postulate. But since the Good has not itself the power thus to realise itself, it is necessary to postulate a