Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/61

 be a natural being although he is Man, in so far as what is natural constitutes the end, the content, and the essential character of his acts of will.

It is necessary to view this characteristic in a stricter way. Man is Man as being a subject or person, and as a natural subject he is a definite single subject, and his will is a definite single will; particularity constitutes the content of his will, i.e., the natural man is selfish.

We demand of the man who is called good that he should at least regulate his conduct in accordance with general principles and laws. The naturalness of will is, strictly speaking, the selfishness of will as distinguished from the universality of will, and as contrasted with the rationality of the will which has been trained to guide itself by universality. This Evil personified in a general way is the Devil. This latter, as representing the Negative which wills itself, is because of this, self-identity, and must accordingly have the element of affirmation also in him, as he has in Milton, where his energy, which is full of character, makes him better than many an angel.

But the fact that Man in so far as he represents the natural will is evil, does not imply that we can no longer regard him from the other point of view, according to which he is potentially good. He always remains good, viewed in accordance with his notion or conception; but Man is consciousness, and is consequently essentially differentiation, and therefore a real, definite subject as distinguished from his notion; and since this subject is, to begin with, merely distinguished from its notion, and has not yet returned into the unity of its subjectivity with the notion, into the rational state, this reality which it has is natural reality, and that is selfishness.

The fact of evil directly presupposes a relation between reality and the Notion, and consequently we thus get simply the contradiction which is in potential Being, the contradiction of the Notion and particularity, of Good and