refore on the one hand, if we consider its material, as
the work of circumstances; but on the other hand, if we reflect on the
form, as the act of a self-determining actor. Want of freedom (the being
determined through the given situation) and freedom (the determination
to the act) are united in actual life as something which is exactly so,
and cannot become anything else as final. The essence of the spiritual
being stands always over against this unavoidable limitation as that
which is in itself infinite, which is beyond all history, because the
absolute spirit, in and for itself, has no history. That which one calls
his history is only the manifesting of himself, and his everlasting
return out of this manifestation into himself an act which in absolute
spirit coincides with the transcending of all manifestation. From the
nature which belongs to him there arises for the individual spirit the
impulse towards a holy life, i.e. the being freed from his history even
in the midst of its process. He gratifies this impulse negatively
through the considering of what has happened as past and gone, as that
which lives now only ideally in the recollection; and positively through
the positing of a new actual existence in which he strives to realize
the idea of freedom which constitutes his necessity, as purer and higher
than before. This constant new-birth out of the grave of the past to the
life of a more beautiful future is the genuine reconciliation with
destiny. The false reconciliation may assume different forms. It may
abstain from all action because man through this limits himself and
becomes responsible. This is to despair of freedom, which condemns the
spirit to the loss of itself since its nature demands activity. The
abstract quietism of the Indian penitents, of the Buddhists, of the
fanatical ascetics, of the Protestant recluses, &c., is an error of this
kind. The man may become indifferent about the ethical determinateness
of his deeds. In this case he acts; but because he has no faith in the
necessary connection of his deeds through the means of freedom, a
connection which he would willingly ascribe to mere chance, he loses his
spiritual essence. This is the error of indifference and of its
frivolity, which denies the open mystery of the ruling of destiny.
Education must therefore imbue man with respect for external movements
of history and with confidence in the inexhaustibleness of the
progressive human spirit, since