Page:Appearance and Reality (1916).djvu/467

acter. The unity implies a complete suppression of the relation, as such; but, with that suppression, religion and the good have altogether, as such, disappeared. If you identify the Absolute with God, that is not the God of religion. If again you separate them, God becomes a finite factor in the Whole. And the effort of religion is to put an end to, and break down, this relation—a relation which, none the less, it essentially presupposes. Hence, short of the Absolute, God cannot rest, and, having reached that goal, he is lost and religion with him. It is this difficulty which appears in the problem of the religious self-consciousness. God must certainly be conscious of himself in religion, but such self-consciousness is most imperfect.^[1] For if the external relation

1. The two extremes in the human-divine self-consciousness cannot wholly unite in one concordant self. It is interesting to compare such expressions as—
   
   

   “I am the eye with which the Universe
   Beholds itself and knows itself divine,”
   
   

   and
   
   

   “They reckon ill who leave me out;
   When me they fly, I am the wings;
   I am the doubter and the doubt,
   And I the hymn the Brahmin sings,”
   
   

   and
   
   

   “Die Sehnsucht du, und was sie stillt,”
   
   

   with
   
   

   Ne suis-je pas un faux accord
   Dans la divine symphonic,
   Grace à la vorace Ironie
   Qui me secoue et qui me mord?
   
   

   Elle est dans ma voix, la criarde!
   C’est tout mon sang, ce poison noir!
   Je suis le sinistre miroir
   Où la mégère se regarde!
   
   

   Je suis la plaie et le couteau!
   Je suis le soufflet et la joue!
   Je suis les membres et la roue,
   Et la victime et le bourreau!