real, and the will to realize therefore nothing but the ideal, the theoretical and practical assertion that only as ideal is the self real.
Justification by faith means that, having thus identified myself with the object, I feel myself in that identification to be already one with it, and to enjoy the bliss of being, all falsehood overcome, what I truly am. By my claim to be one with the ideal, which comprehends me too, and by assertion of the non-reality of all that is opposed to it, the evil in the world and the evil incarnate in me through past bad acts, all this falls into the unreal: I being one with the ideal, this is not mine, and so imputation of offences goes with the change of self, and applies not now to my true self, but to the unreal, which I repudiate and hand over to destruction.[1]
In one way faith is of course only ideal, for the bad self does not cease. Yet religion is here very different from morality. Recalling to the reader what we said as to the meaning of ‘evolution’ or ‘progress’ (p. 173), we say here that morality is an evolution or progress. The end, which is involved in these, is becoming realized in the evolution or progress, and therefore is not yet real; and so in morality we have the end presented as what claims to be real, together with the process of its realization, and that means its non-reality. Here we are not what we are, and must welcome a progress; though that means a contradiction, which again we know we are not. But for religious faith the end of the evolution is presented as that which, despite the fact of the evolution, is already evolved; or rather which stands above the element of event, contradiction, and finitude. Despite what seems, we feel that we are more than a progress or evolution, in fact not that at all, but now fully real: and this full reality of ourselves we present to ourselves as an object, and by recognizing, both by judgment and will, in that object our real self, we anticipate, or rather rise above the sphere of, progress. Ourselves
- ↑ Hear again the vehement expression of mysticism. ‘When reason tells thee, ‘Thou art outside God,’ then answer thou, ‘No, I am in God, I am in heaven, in it, in him, and for eternity will never leave him. The devil may keep my sins, and the world my flesh; I live in God’s will, his life shall be my life, his will my will; I will be dead in my reason that he may live in me, and all my deeds shall be his deeds.’’
