Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/81

 prosper and succeed; he can only act on the presupposition that the Good by its very nature involves growth and success, that it is not merely something posited, but, on the contrary, is in its own nature objective. Presupposition involves essential determination.

The harmony of this contradiction must accordingly be represented as something which is a presupposition for the subject. The Notion, in getting to know the divine unity, knows that God essentially exists in-and-for-Himself, and consequently what the subject thinks, and its activity, have no meaning in themselves, but are and exist only in virtue of that presupposition. The truth must therefore appear to the subject as a presupposition, and the question is as to how and in what form the truth can appear in connection with the standpoint we now occupy; it is infinite sorrow, the pure depth of the soul, and it is for this sorrow that the cancelling or solution of the contradiction has to exist. This cancelling has, to begin with, necessarily the form of a presupposition, because what we have here is a one-sided extreme.

What belongs to the subject, therefore, is simply this act of positing, action as representing merely one side; the other side is the substantial and fundamental one, which contains in it the possibility of reconciliation. This means that this opposition does not really exist implicitly. To put it more correctly, it means that the opposition springs up eternally, and at the same time eternally abolishes itself, is at the same time eternal reconciliation.

That this is the truth, we saw when dealing with the eternal divine Idea, which implies that God as living Spirit distinguishes Himself from Himself, posits an Other, and in this Other remains identical with Himself, and has in this other His self-identity with Himself.

This is the truth; it is this truth which must constitute the one side of what Man has to become conscious of, the potentially existing, substantial side.