Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/73

 The one side of this disunion thus becomes apparent by the elevation of Man to the pure spiritual unity of God. This sorrow and this consciousness represent Man’s descent into himself, and consequently into the negative moment of disunion or evil.

This is the negative, or inward, descent or absorption into evil; inward absorption of an affirmative kind is absorption into the pure unity of God. When this stage is reached, it is seen that I as a natural man do not correspond to what represents the truth, and that I am entangled in the multiplicity of natural particular things, and just as the truth of the one Good is present in me with an infinite certainty, so this want of correspondence gets a determinate character as something which ought not to be.

The problem, the demand, is of an infinite kind. It may be said that since I am a natural man I have from one point of view a consciousness of myself; but to be in a state of nature means that I am without consciousness in reference to myself, means the absence of will; I am a being of the kind which acts in accordance with Nature, and so far regarded from this side I am, as is often said, innocent, I have, so far, no consciousness of what I do, I am without any will of my own, what I do I do without definite inclination, and allow myself to be surprised into doing it by impulse.

Here, however, in this state of opposition this innocence disappears. For it is just this natural, unconscious, and will-less Being of Man which ought not to be, and it is consequently determined to evil in presence of the pure unity, the perfect purity which I know as representing the True and the Absolute. In putting it thus we imply that when this point has been reached it is essentially this very unconsciousness and absence of will which is to be considered as evil.

The contradiction, however, still remains, turn it how you will. Since this so-called innocence characterises