Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/71

 of the contradiction and opposition, have been awakened in him.

We have found the form of the opposition in all religions; but the opposition between Man and the power of Nature, between Man and the moral law, the moral will, morality, fate, is an opposition of a subordinate kind, involving opposition merely in reference to some particular thing.

The man who transgresses a commandment is evil, but he is evil only in this particular case, he is in a condition of opposition only in reference to this special commandment. We saw that in the Persian religion good and evil stood to each other in a relation of general opposition; there the opposition is outside of Man, who is himself outside of it. This abstract opposition is not present within himself.

It is accordingly required that Man should have this abstract opposition within himself and overcome it, not merely that he should not obey this or the other command, since the truth rather really is that he is implicitly evil, evil in his universal character, in his most inward nature, purely evil, evil in his inner being, and that this quality of evil represents the essential quality of his conception, and that he has to become conscious of this.

(3.) It is with this depth of Spirit that we are concerned. Depth means the abstraction of the opposition, the pure universalisation of the opposition, so that its two sides acquire this absolutely universal character in reference to each other.

This opposition has, speaking generally, two forms: on the one hand, it is the opposition of evil as such, implying that it is the opposition itself which is evil—this is the opposition viewed in reference to God; on the other hand, it is opposition as against the world, implying that it is out of harmony with the world—this is misery, the condition of division or disunion viewed from the other side.