Chapter II: The Form of the Individual Departments (3)

But where the life of the individual acquires a genuine being and a connection with the realm of self-consciousness, then, notwithstanding all that is fleeting and insubstantial, the individual cannot regard himself as a transitory appearance in the whole, even in the ultimate basis of his being. Where, in contrast with all the meaninglessness of mere nature and all the pretence of mere society, a movement towards inner unity and substantial being emerges, the individual will be elevated into a time-transcendent order, and must necessarily acquire some position within it. The whole movement towards spirituality in the human sphere would be vain, and all distinctively human life would be a meaningless contradiction, if the individuals in whom alone the spiritual life breaks forth spontaneously were included solely and entirely in the stream of the process of nature. If the spiritual life has once revealed itself to us, so far as to begin an independent and distinctive being within us, then this being will assert itself in some way. This does not imply agreement with the usual belief in immortality, which would preserve man just as he is through all eternity, and thus condemn him to the torture of rigid continuance in the same form; a state that would, indeed, be as unbearable as the pain of the traditional hell. As the world as a whole is in the highest degree mysterious to us, so our future is veiled in the deepest obscurity. But, if with the essence of our being we are elevated into a universal spiritual life, and if in the innermost basis of our life we participate in an eternal order, then the time-transcendence of this life assures to us also some kind of time-transcendence in our being.

_So löst sich jene grosse Frage
Nach unserm zweiten Vaterland,
Denn das Beständige der ird'schen Tage
Verbürgt uns ewigen Bestand._

GOETHE