The German World

Protestantism had introduced the principle of Subjectivity, importing religious emancipation and inward harmony, but accompanying this with the belief in Subjectivity as Evil, and in a power [adverse to man's highest interests] whose embodiment is "the World. " Within the Catholic pale also, the casuistry of the Jesuits brought into vogue interminable investigations, as tedious and wire-drawn as those in which the scholastic theology delighted, respecting the subjective spring of the Will and the motives that affect it. This Dialectic, which unsettles all particular judgments and opinions, transmuting the Evil into Good and Good into Evil, left at last nothing remaining but the mere action of subjectivity itself, the Abstractum of Spirit – Thought. Thought contemplates everything under the form of Universality, and is consequently the impulsion towards and production of the Universal. In that elder scholastic theology the real subject-matter of investigation – the doctrine of the Church – remained an ultramundane affair; in the Protestant theology also Spirit still sustained a relation to the Ultramundane; for on the one side we have the will of the individual – the Spirit of Man – I, myself, and on the other the Grace of God, the Holy Ghost; and so in the Wicked, the Devil. But in Thought, Self moves within the limits of its own sphere; that with which it is occupied – its objects are as absolutely present to it [as they were distinct and separate in the intellectual grade above mentioned] ; for in thinking I must elevate the object to Universality. This is utter and absolute Freedom, for the pure Ego, like pure Light, is with itself alone [is not involved with any alien principle] ; thus that which is diverse from itself, sensuous or spiritual, no longer presents an object of dread, for in contemplating such diversity it is inwardly free and can freely confront it. A practical interest makes use of, consumes the objects offered to it: a theoretical interest calmly contemplates them, assured that in themselves they present no alien element. – Consequently, the ne plus ultra of Inwardness, of Subjectiveness, is Thought. Man is not free, when he is not thinking; for except when thus engaged he sustains a relation to the world around him as to another, an alien form of being. This comprehension – the penetration of the Ego into and beyond other forms of being with the most profound self-certainty [the identity of subjective and objective Reason being recognized], directly involves the harmonization of Being: for it must be observed that the unity of Thought with its Object is already implicitly present [i.e., in the fundamental constitution of the Universe], for Reason is the substantial basis of Consciousness as well as of the External and Natural. Thus that which presents itself as the Object of Thought is no longer an absolutely distinct form of existence [ein Jenseits], not of an alien and grossly substantial [as opposed to intelligible] nature.