Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/62

 Evil. It is to put a false question to ask, Is Man good by nature, or is he not? That is a false position, and so, too, it is superficial to say, He is as much good as evil.

In reference particularly to the statement that the will is caprice or arbitrary will, and can will good or evil, it may be remarked that, as a matter of fact, this arbitrary will is not will. It is will only in so far as it comes to a resolution, for in so far as it wills this or that it is not will. The natural will is the will of the desires, of inclination which wills the immediate, and does not as yet will anything definite, for in order to do that it would have to be rational will and be able to perceive that law is rational. What is demanded of Man is that he should not be natural will, that he should not be as he is merely by nature. The conception of volition is something different from this; so long as Man continues to exist ideally as will, he is only potentially will, he is not yet actual will, he does not yet exist as Spirit. This is the truth in its universal aspect; the special aspect of it must here be left out of consideration. We can speak of what belongs to the definite sphere of morality only when we are dealing with some particular condition in which Man is placed; it has nothing to do with the nature of Spirit.

As opposed to the view that the will is evil, we have the fact that when we regard Man in a concrete way we speak of volition, and this concrete, this actual element cannot be simply something negative; the evil will, however, is thought of as purely negative volition, and this is a mere abstraction. If Man is not by nature what he should be, then he is implicitly rational, implicitly Spirit. This represents the affirmative element in him, and the fact that in the state of nature he is not what he ought to be, has reference accordingly only to the form of volition, the essential point being that Man is potentially Spirit. This potentiality persists when the natural will is being yielded up; it is the Notion, the persistent