Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/64

 he comes to be regarded as evil, so that this reflection is a sort of external demand or condition implying that if he were not to reflect upon himself in this way the other characteristic, namely, that he is evil, would drop away.

When this act of reflection is made a duty, then it may be so represented as to suggest that it only is what is essential, and that there can be no content without it. Further, the relation of reflection is stated also in such a way as to imply that it is reflection or knowledge which makes man evil, so that it is evil, and it is this knowledge which ought not to exist, and which is the source of evil. In this way of representing it, we have the connection which exists between the fact of being evil and knowledge. This is a point of essential importance.

In its more definite form this idea of evil implies that Man becomes evil through knowledge, or, as the Bible represents it, that he ate of the tree of knowledge. In this way, knowledge, intelligence, the theoretic element, and will enter into a more definite relation, and the nature of evil gets to be discussed in a more definite way. In this connection it may accordingly be remarked that as a matter of fact it is knowledge which is the source of all evil, for knowledge or consciousness is just the act by which separation, the negative element, judgment, division in the more definite specific form of independent existence or Being-for-self in general, comes into existence. Man’s nature is not as it ought to be; it is knowledge which reveals this to him, and brings to light that condition of Being in which he ought not to be. This obligation which lies on him is his Notion, and the fact that he is not what he should be originates first of all in the sense of separation or alienation, and from a comparison between what he is and what he is in his essential nature, in-and-for-himself. It is knowledge which first brings out the contrast or antithesis in which evil is found. The animal, the stone, the plant is not evil; evil is first present within the sphere of knowledge;