Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/67

 actually done, but here again we are using the language of sense; the first man, considered from the point of view of thought, signifies Man as Man, not any individual accidental single man out of many, but the first man absolutely, Man regarded in accordance with his conception or notion. Man as such is consciousness, and consequently he enters into this state of disunion—consciousness, namely, which when it gets a more specific character is knowledge.

In so far as the universal man is represented as the first man, he is distinguished from other men, and so the question arises: It is only this particular individual who has done the evil deed, how, then, has it affected others? Here accordingly we have the popular conception of inheritance, and by means of it the defect which attaches to the representation of Man as such, as an individual first man, is corrected.

Division or disunion is essentially implied in the conception of Man; the one-sided view involved in the representation of his act as the act of one individual is thus changed into a complete view by the introduction of the idea of communicated or inherited evil.

Work, &c., is declared to be the punishment of sin, and this from a general point of view is a necessary consequence.

The animal does not work, it works only when compelled, it does not work by nature, it does not eat its bread in the sweat of its brow, it does not produce its own bread; it directly finds in Nature satisfaction for all the needs it has. Man, too, finds the material for doing this; but the material, we may say, is for Man the least important part; the infinite means whereby he satisfies his needs come to him through work.

Work done in the sweat of his brow, both bodily work, and the work of the spirit, which is the harder of the two, is immediately connected with the knowledge of good and evil. That Man must make himself what