(_α_) For this reason the idea of _immortality_ is not to be found where this mode of conception obtains in its original purity; for this idea involves the assumption that the individual self, the soul, the spirit of man is essentially a self-subsistent entity. In the religion of the Sublime it is only the One that is apprehended as imperishable; opposed to that all else merely subsists and passes away, is neither essentially free nor infinite. (_β_) And, further, on a similar ground man is conceived in his absolute _unworthiness_ before God; his exaltation consists in the fear of the Lord, in a trembling before His scorn. Over and over again, with a directness which tears aside every veil and opens the very depths, we have the cry of the soul to God depicted, the sorrow over the sense of its nothingness, increasing lament and groanings unutterable. (_γ_) On the other hand if the individual persist in his finiteness of opposition to God, this deliberately willed persistence is wickedness, which as _evil_ and _sin_ belongs only to the natural and human condition, and is conceived as remote from the One undifferentiated substance as pain and everything else that is essentially negative. (_c_) _Thirdly_, however, within this very condition of spiritual nakedness, and, in despite of it, man secures a freer and more independent position. On the one hand out of the fundamental repose and constancy of God viewed in reference to His Will and the commands which that Will imposes upon humanity, arises the _Law_; while under another point of view the wholly unambiguous distinction between that which is human and that which is Divine, between the finite and the Absolute, is implied in this type of human exaltation. Therewith the judgment upon good and evil, and the onus of decision in respect to either the one or the other is transferred to the individual soul itself. This relation to the Absolute, and the question it involves as to the fittingness or unfittingness of man over against the same presents, therefore, also an aspect, which applies to the individual himself, his own behaviour and action. In other words we may trace in man's rightful acts and his following of the Law a relation to God which is, side by side with the former one, an affirmative relation, a relation which has to bring generally the external condition of his existence, whether it be positive or negative, weal, enjoyment and satisfaction, or pain, unhappiness and oppression into union with the obedience of his heart or his stubbornness of spirit against the Law, and accept the same in the one case as favour and reward, in the other as trial and punishment. [Footnote 67: _Des An-und-für-sich-seyenden, i.e._, the explicit content of all that is implied in actuality cognized as an object in itself.]