Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/70

 Spirit must reflect upon itself, and in this way disunion arises, it must not remain at the point at which it is seen not to be what it is potentially, but must become adequate to its conception or notion, it must become universal Spirit. Regarded from the standpoint of division or disunion, its potential Being is for it an Other, and it itself is natural will; it is divided within itself, and this division is so far its feeling or consciousness of a contradiction, and there is thus given along with it the necessity for the abolition of the contradiction.

On the one hand, it is said that Man in Paradise without sin would have been immortal—immortality on earth and the immortality of the soul are not separated in this statement—and would have lived for ever. If this outward death is to be regarded as merely a consequence of sin, then he would be implicitly immortal; on the other hand, we have it also stated in the story that it was not till Man should eat of the tree of life that he was to become immortal.

The matter, in fact, stands thus. Man is immortal in consequence of knowledge, for it is only as a thinking being that he is not a mortal animal soul, and is a free, pure soul. Reasoned knowledge, thought, is the root of his life, of his immortality as a totality in himself. The animal soul is sunk in the life of the body, while Spirit, on the other hand, is a totality in itself.

The next thing is, that this idea which we have reached in the region of thought should take an actual shape in Man, i.e., that Man should come to see the infinite nature of the opposition, of the opposition, that is, between good and evil, that he should know himself to be evil in so far as he is something natural, and thus become conscious of the antithesis, not merely in general, but as actually existing in himself, and see that it is he who is evil, and realise that the demand that the Good should be attained, and consequently the consciousness of disunion and the feeling of pain because