and what there was in a manner visible is here invisible; (2) the relation of the particular subject to the whole was there immediate unity by unreflecting habituation and direct perception; here it involves the thought which rises above the given, and the consciousness of a presupposed and suppressed estrangement.
Here, as in the world of my station, we have the objective side, the many affirmations of the one will, the one body, the real ideal humanity, which in all its members is the same, although in every one it is different; and which is completely realized not in any one this or that, nor in any mere ‘collective unity’ of such particulars, but only in the whole as a whole. And we have the subjective personal side, where the one will of the whole is, in its unity with the conscious members, self-conscious, and wills itself as the personal identity of the universal and particular will.[1]
Such is the object, the fore-realized divine ideal; and by faith the particular man has to make that his, to identify himself therewith, behold and feel himself therewith identified, and in his own self-consciousness have the witness of it. And this, as we explained, is done by the dying to the private self as such, by the bestowal of it on the object, and by the living in the self which is one with the divine ideal that is felt and known as the only real self, and now too as my self. To our previous remarks on this
- ↑ By faith, and so far as faith holds, the ideal as the self, and the self as the ideal, is all that is real; and so, on the external side of my works, I regard myself as, with others, the member or function of the divine whole. What falls outside, however much a fact, is still unreal. Again, on the inside, through faith I, as the mere this me, no longer am; but only I as the self-conscious personal will of the divine, the spirit of the whole, which, as that spirit, knows itself in me. On both sides, though the form is not swallowed up nor lost, yet the mere particular content of the self has for faith disappeared.
But there is a difference on the two sides, which was also there in ‘My Station,’ but the losing sight of which was there not likely to lead to confusion; while here a confusion on this head may happen, and is a serious matter. To explain—on the inside the particular self knows and feels itself now immediately one with the universal, which is the will of all selves; but on the outside, its realization in works, it is only one member of the whole, one function or set of functions which is not, and which falls outside of, other sides or sets of functions. So long as it remains on the inside, the self is not apart from other selves; it is when it comes out to act that it is forced to distinguish itself.
It is quite true that, when we act, on the inside also the whole will is for each person diverse; for it is not an universal which remains inert. It is presented in a specialized form as what is a relative ‘to be done’ in such and such a case, which, if reflected on, is seen to be not other cases—but on the inner side this reflection, and hence this discrimination, does not exist. The member feels and knows itself, not as this member distinct from that member, but (since for faith the bad self is not) immediately one with the will of the entire organism. On the outside, on the other hand, the knowledge of its distinctness is forced upon it. There its realization is indeed the affirmation of the will of the whole, but the entire whole is not there; some of it is elsewhere, and, as a whole, it is realized only in the whole, which this or that man is not. In its works the self-conscious function finds that it is not other functions; it remains finite, and all possibility of the confounding the merely human with the divine is excluded.
