Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/54

 Thus inasmuch as Other-Being has been characterised as the totality of appearance or manifestation, it expresses in itself the Idea, and it is this which is really designated by the term, the wisdom of God. Wisdom is, however, so far a general expression, and it is the business of philosophical knowledge to understand this conception in Nature, to conceive of it as a system in which the Divine Idea is mirrored. This Idea is manifested, but its content is just the manifestation, and consists in its distinguishing itself as an Other, and then taking back this Other into itself, so that the expression taking back applies equally to what is done outside and inside. In Nature these stages break up into a system of kingdoms of Nature, of which that of living things is the highest.

Life, however, the highest form in which the Idea exhibits itself in Nature, is simply something which sacrifices itself and whose essence is to become Spirit, and this act of sacrifice is the negativity of the Idea as against its existence in this form. Spirit is just this act of advance into reality by means of Nature, i.e., Spirit finds its antithesis, or opposite, in Nature, and it is by the annulling of this opposition that it exists for itself and is Spirit.

The finite world is the side of the difference which is put in contrast with the side which remains in its unity; and thus it breaks up into the natural world and into the world of finite Spirit. Nature enters into a relation with Man only, and not on its own account into a relation with God, for Nature is not knowledge; God is Spirit, but Nature knows nothing of Spirit.

Nature has been created by God, but she does not of herself enter into a relation with God, by which is meant that she is not possessed of knowledge. She stands in a relation to Man only, and in this relation to Man she represents what is called the side of his dependence.