Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/79

 opposition is not the truth, but that, on the contrary, the truth consists in reaching unity by the negation of this opposition, i.e., the peace, the reconciliation which this need demands. Reconciliation is the demand of the subject’s sense of need, and is inherent in it as being what is infinitely one, what is self-identical.

This abolition of the opposition has two sides. The subject must come to be conscious that this opposition is not something implicit or essential, but that the truth, the inner nature of Spirit, implies the abolition and absorption of this opposition. Accordingly, just because it is implicitly, and, from the point of view of truth, done away with in something higher, the subject as such in its Being-for-self can reach and arrive at the abolition of this opposition, that is to say, can attain to peace or reconciliation.

1. The very fact that the opposition is implicitly done away with constitutes the condition, the presupposition, the possibility of the subject’s ability to do away with it actually. In this respect it may be said that the subject does not attain reconciliation on its own account, that is, as a particular subject, and in virtue of its own activity, and what it itself does; reconciliation is not brought about, nor can it be brought about, by the subject in its character as subject.

This is the nature of the need when the question is, By what means can it be satisfied? Reconciliation can be brought about only when the annulling of the division has been arrived at; when what seems to shun reconciliation, this opposition, namely, is non-existent; when the divine truth is seen to be for this, the resolved or cancelled contradiction, in which the two opposites lay aside their mutually abstract relation.

Here again, accordingly, the question above referred to once more arises. Can the subject not bring about this reconciliation by itself by means of its own action, by bringing its inner life to correspond with the divine Idea