One. If, for instance, God is kind and just too, the kindness contradicts the justice. In like manner, God is almighty and wise. He is therefore on the one hand the power before which everything vanishes—is not; but this negation of all that has a definite existence is in contradiction with His wisdom. This last demands something which is definite, it has an aim or purpose, it is the limitation of that indefinite element, which power is. In idea, each element has its place, and all rest quietly side by side: man is free and also dependent; there is good and there is evil, too, in the world. In thought the various elements are brought into mutual relation, and then the contradiction becomes apparent.
There is something quite characteristic about the action of reflecting thought, when it appears as the abstract understanding and takes to do with idea, when the latter expresses inner qualities and relations in a sensuous, natural, or, to speak generally, in an external shape. As the reflecting understanding, besides, always has pre-suppositions of finitude, as it gives these absolute validity, and makes them the rule or standard, overthrowing the Idea and absolute truth if these are opposed to them, so, too, it turns sensuous and natural specific forms, in which, after all, idea seeks to recognise the thought of the Universal, into quite definite finite relations, holds fast this finiteness, and then declares idea, or ordinary thought, to be in error. To a certain degree, it is still the dialectic of idea itself which is contained in this activity of the understanding, and hence the enormous importance of the Aufklärung, which that action of understanding was, for the clearing up of thought. To a certain extent, however, it is the case that here the dialectic of idea is driven beyond its true compass, and transplanted into the territory of formal arbitrariness or caprice.
Thus, for instance, in the popular conception or idea of original sin, the inner relation of thought is at the same time conceived of in the specific form of what is
