§ 59. Every moment in which we confront externally given existence involves the implication that the world offers to the human spirit an abundance of stimuli to develop those conditions in which the God-consciousness can realize itself, and at the same time that in manifold degrees the world lends itself to being used by the human spirit as an instrument and means of expression.
- It has been taken for granted above (§ 5, 3) that the God-consciousness may develop in every state of consciousness which has risen above animal confusion, so that in it there is expressed the contrast between the self and the ‘given,’ and the contrast between self-consciousness and objective consciousness, inasmuch as the two elements in the antithesis confront each other simultaneously. The same holds good also of the contrast between passive and active. But while in the sphere we are dealing with the God-consciousness, owing to the teleological character of Christian piety,1 can unite with the passive only as it is related to self-activity, the interposition of the passive none the less is necessary to mark out clearly the moments of self-activity, because clarity of consciousness only arises through a successive contrast of distinct moments. Passive states, however, can only arise through operative influences, and hence the original perfection of the world in relation to men consists primarily in this, that in it is temporally grounded the excitation of passive states which are to pass into active states (these we name incentives), or, in other words, that they sufficiently determine the receptivity of man to the awakening and shaping of his self-activity. If now we take man first of all purely on his inner side, as a self-active being in whom God-consciousness is possible—that is, as spirit; then, from this point of view, his bodily side, which is not the man himself, belongs originally to this material world into which the spirit enters. Only gradually does it become for the spirit instrument and means of expression—as later, mediately through it, all other things likewise become instrument and means of expression—but first of all and primarily it mediates the stimulating influences of the world upon the spirit. Thus the whole of this aspect of the original perfection of the world can be summarily expressed by saying that in it there is given for the spirit such an organism as the human body in living connexion with all else—an organism which brings the spirit into contact with the rest of existence.
Clarity of consciousness, however, is also conditioned by the contrasted distinction of self-consciousness and objective consciousness, and this is closely connected with the fact that different kinds of influences can be related to the same self-consciousness, so that the self-consciousness can be regarded as an entity existing independently of every particular influence (upon this all experience and eventually all science depend, though here we are only interested in the latter for the sake of the former). Hence we may summarily express this aspect of the original perfection of the world by the concept of its knowability. The two aspects are essentially bound up together, for without an organism such as ours there would be no interrelation between finite spirit and corporeal existence, however suitably adapted to such interrelation the latter might be. And without such an ordered distinction of existence the human organism would be a meaningless phenomenon. So, then, the two together are one: the knowability of existence is the ideal side of the original perfection of the world, and the natural subsistence of the human organism is the real side of the same perfection as directly related to human receptivity.
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We must now put the same series in the reverse order. For if all self-activity in men were determined by the influences of the (external) world it would be merely reaction, and every feeling of freedom, even partial freedom, would be illusory. But if the receptivity is at least living and individual, so that the same influence is not the same thing for all, still more, if irrespective of influence, we can attribute to the spirit an original self-activity that is not simply immanent in the individual spiritual personality (which indeed might be the root of that consciousness of species which is so distinctively human), then to the perfection of the world there belongs also such a receptivity for the influences of the spiritual self-activity of man as is, considered in itself, unlimited. This receptivity must naturally begin at the human organism regarded as a constitutive part of the world; but from this it broadens out more and more until it reaches those constitutive elements of the world which are of such a nature that they are subject to no other influences except that of being known—which brings us to the borders of the preceding section. Though we sum up this receptivity of the world under the two terms, instrument and means of expression, we do not in the least mean to indicate a division, as if one thing could only be one and another the other. Rather the organism is itself both, the most immediate instrument and the most immediate means of expression; and so every thing, if it is the one, is always the other also. Nevertheless, these are the two relations through which the self-consciousness accompanying states of self-activity becomes a means of awakening the God-consciousness. For it is only in connexion with his organs that man realizes sovereignty over the world,2 of which he can only be conscious as something based upon the divine omnipotence; and it is only inasmuch as the simple activity of spirit is expressed through the medium of space and time that it awakens, as a copy thereof, the consciousness of the divine causality.3
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That these two chief moments of the original perfection of the world essentially go together is self-evident. For the first moment would be simply an imperfection—that is, an arrangement leading to nothing—apart from the second; the knowability of the world would be empty if it did not include in itself the expression of its being known; and the human organism would be lost among the more imperfect kinds of existence as similar to them, even though it were supposed to include the inner life of the spirit, if there did not proceed from it a new power of organization into which everything else could be taken up. On the other hand, the receptivity of the rest of existence to the influence of the spirit would be empty and meaningless unless the spirit could be filled by it. But now both these together embrace completely the relations of the world to the spirit as the seat of God-consciousness, since in the existence presented to it the human spirit can find no means other than this for developing this consciousness. And indeed in this relation to the passive states which arise through the influence of the world, taken in itself, the human spirit has precisely the same means of development whether these states as life-moments are pleasant or unpleasant, elevating or depressing; and the same holds good of its acquired instruments and gathered means of expression in so far as, being external, they are capable of reacting upon men in various ways and of exciting passive states. For the relation of either to man’s self-activity is not thereby altered, nor is the God-consciousness as such more tardily aroused by the unpleasant than by the pleasant.