universality, is the Thought of Man, and the Idea of absolute Spirit in-and-for-itself. In the process also in which Other-Being annuls itself, this Idea and the objectivity of God are implicitly real, and they are in fact immediately present in all men; out of the cup of the entire spirit-realm there foams for him infinitude. The sorrow which the finite experiences in being thus annulled and absorbed, does not give pain, since it is by this means raised to the rank of a moment in the process of the Divine.
“Why should that trouble trouble us, since it makes our pleasure more?”
Here, however, at the standpoint at which we now are, it is not with the Thought of Man that we have got to do. Nor can we stop short at the characteristic of individuality in general, which is itself again universal, and is present in abstract thinking as such.
3. On the contrary, if Man is to get a consciousness of the unity of divine and human nature, and of this characteristic of Man as belonging to Man in general; or if this knowledge is to force its way wholly into the consciousness of his finitude as the beam of eternal light which reveals itself to him in the finite, then it must reach him in his character as Man in general, i.e., apart from any particular conditions of culture or training; it must come to him as representing Man in his immediate state, and it must be universal for immediate consciousness.
The consciousness of the absolute Idea, which we have in thought, must therefore not be put forward as belonging to the standpoint of philosophical speculation, of speculative thought, but must, on the contrary, appear in the form of certainty for men in general. This does not mean that they think this consciousness, or perceive and recognise the necessity of this Idea; but what we are concerned to show is rather that the Idea becomes for
