sm and Mysticism of Absolute Idealism.]

Sect. 193. Where the law of life is the implication in the finite
self-consciousness of the eternal and divine self-consciousness, there
can be no division between morality and religion, as there can be none
between thought and will. Whatever man seeks is in the end God. As the
perfect fulfilment of the thinking self, God is the truth; as the
perfect fulfilment of the willing self, God is the good. The finite
self-consciousness finds facts that are not understood, and so seeks to
resolve itself into the perfect self wherein all that is given has
meaning. On the other hand, the finite self-consciousness finds ideals
that are not realized, and so seeks to resolve itself into that perfect
self wherein all that is significant is given. All interests thus
converge toward

"some state of conscious spirit in which the opposition of
cognition and volition is overcome--in which we neither judge
our ideas by the world, nor the world by our ideas, but are
aware that inner and outer are in such close and necessary
harmony that even the thought of possible discord has become
impossible. In its unity not only cognition and volition, but
feeling also, must be blended and united. In some way or
another it must have overcome the rift in discursive
knowledge, and the immediate must for it be no longer the
alien. It must be as direct as art, as certain and universal
as philosophy."[391:13]

The religious consciousness proper to absolute idealism is both
pantheistic and mystical, but with distinction. Platonism is pantheistic
in that nature is resolved into God. All that is not perfect is esteemed
only for its promise of perfection. And Platonism is mystical in that
the purification and universalization of the affections brings one in
the end to a perfection that exceeds all modes of thought and speech.
With Spinoza, on the other hand, God may be said to be resolved into
nature. Nature is made divine, but is none the less nature, for its
divinity consists in its absolute necessity. Spinoza's pantheism passes
over into mysticism because the absolute necessity exceeds in both unity
and richness the laws known to the human understanding. In absolute
idealism, finally, both God and nature are resolved into the self. For
that which is divine in experience is self-consciousness, and this is at
the same time the ground of nature. Thus in the highest