i«i BOUGHT WITH THK INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF 189X A,..^.6m::.S^.A. /^A^/p- j(^^ Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924095630954 LECTUEES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION LECTUEES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION TOGETHER WITH A WORK ON THE PROOFS OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD By GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL TRANSLATED FROM THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION By the EEV. E. B. SPEIRS, B.D., and J. BURDON SANDERSON THE TRANSLATION EDITED By THE Rev. E. B. SPEIRS, B.D. IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. I. LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER, & CO. LTP PATEKNOSTEK HOUSE, CHARiyC CROSS KOAD 1895 V '! I ; fi ;■ \' I I' n 5 \ VliAHf 1 i TA^ 7*iff/iis 0/ iram-/a(iyn and of reproduction are reserved. Printed ly Eali.antvne, Hanson & C6. At the Ballantyne Press BDITOE'S PBEFACE The first German edition of the *' Lectures on the Philo- sophy of Eeligion" was published at Berlin in 1832, the year after Hegel's death, and was "the earliest instalment of the collected edition of his printed and unprinted works, undertaken by a number of his friends. The book was rather hastily put together, mainly from students' copies of lectures on tbe subject delivered during different sessions, though it also contained matter taken from notes and outlines in Hegel's own liand- writing. A second edition, in an enlarged and very much altered form, appeared in 1840. In the prepara- tion of this second edition, froin which tlie present translation has been made, the editor, Marheineke, drew largely on several important papers found amongst Hegel's MSS., in which his ideas were developed in much greater detail than in any of the sketches previously used ; and he had also at his disposal fresh and very complete copies of the Lectures made by some of Hegel's most distinguished pupils. It will thus be seen that the book in the form in which we have it, is mainly an editorial compilation. With the exception of the "Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God/' which were printed as an appendix in the German edition, and which Hegel was revising for the press when he was suddenly carried off by cholera in the November of 1831, no part of it, not even the part which is Hegel's actual composition, was intended for publication. It is only fair to Hegel's memory that this fact should be taken into consideration, since it accounts for what may seem the rather ragged vi EDITOR'S PREFACE and uneven shape of parts of the work, and for the oc- casional want of proportion between the various sections. However, as the Master of Balliol has pointed out, the informal and discursive character of the Lectures on Eeligiou and other subjects, "if it takes from their authority as expressions of the author's mind, and from their value as scientific treatises, has some compensating advantages if we regard them as a means of education in philosophy ; for," he continues — and his words spe- cially apply to the present set of Lectures — " in this point of view their very artlessness , gives them some- thing of the same stimulating, suggestive power which is attained by the consummate art of the Platonic Dialogues." The following translation was originally undertaken by Miss J. Burdon Sanderson, who at the time of her death had reached the end of the first volume of the German edition (Vols. I., and IL 1-1-22, of the English edition) ; but the rendering had by no means received her final revision. This portion the Editor has carefully revised, and in many parts considerably altered, though in substance it remains as Miss Sanderson left it. The rest of the translation, with the exception of two small parts, is entirely the work of the Editor. A translation of the first three Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God, by E. B. Haldane, M.P., Q.C., was kindly placed by him at the Editor's disposal, and this, with a few minor alterations which were necessary, mainly in order to preserve uniformity of terminology, has been printed as it stood in Mr, Haldane's MS. He has also to thank Miss E. Haldane, the translator of Hegel's *' Lectures on the History of Philosophy," for sending a rough draft translation of the section on " The Eeligion of Beauty," which he has consulted and in part used. He has further to acknowledge the help derived from the letters of the different correspondents who supplied Miss Sander- son with various notes and suggestions, which were of EDITOR'S PREFACE vii f^reat use for the revision of her portion of the work His special thanks are due to a friend whose assistance was freely given amidst a variety of;pressing duties, and whose advice, particularly in all difficulties connected with peculiarities of expression, greatly lightened the somewhat tedious toil of translation. Her sympathy and native knowledf^e of the language of the orifrinal have been invaluable throughout. As regards the rendering of the more strictly technical terms employed by Hegel, it has seemed advisable not to adhere rigidly to any one set of English words, but rather to vary the renderings according to the various changes of meaning, and occasionally to add an alternative English equivalent. Thus "Begriff" has usually been translated by "Notion" — a word which, however objec- tionable otherwise, has already firmly fixed itself in our philosophical terminology ; but " conception " has also been used for it in cases where there was no risk of mis- understanding. Miss Sanderson had decided on "idea" as the least objectionable renderings of " Vorstellung," — pejhaps the most troublesome word in the Hegelian language, — and this the Editor has retained where the German word was used in a very special sense ; but " ordinary thought," " popular conception," and other equivalent expressions have been freely employed ; and in this connection the Editor desires to acknowledge the great assistance he has derived from the notes on Hegelian terms given by Professor Wallace in the valuable Prolegomena to his translation of Hegel's " Logic." As to the work itself, this is not the place to enlarge on its importance to students of philosophy and religion, or to estimate its influence on the development of modern speculative theology. Much of what is most original and suggestive in it has already passed into the best religious and philosophical thought of the time, and any one who has been giving any attention to recent Viii EDITOR'S PREFACE works on the great subject dealt with here by Hegel, and who turns to these Lectures, will be constrained to admit that in them we have the true " Sources " of the evolution principle as applied to the study of religion, although he may not be able to share the enthusiastic hope of the German editor and disciple, that the book, even in its present imperfect form, will go down to posterity as the imperishable monument of a frreat mind. K E. SPEIRS. The Manse, Glendevon, April 26, 1895. CONTENTS Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion . . 1-85 The Relation of the Philosophy of Religion to its Pre- suppositions AND 'to the Principles of the Time . 6-4S I. The severance of religion from the free worldly con- sclonsness . , . . .6 II. The position of the philosophy of religion relatively to philosophy and religion . . .18 1. The attitude of philosophy to religion generally 18 2. The relation of the philosophy of religion to the system of philosophy . ... 23 3. The relation of the philosophy of religion to posi- tive religion . . , 27 III. The relation of the philosophy of religion to the current principles of the religious consciousness. 35 1. Philosophy and the prevalent iiidifference to de- finite dogmas ....... 38 2. The historical treatment of dogmas . . 40 3. Philosophy and immediate knowledge 42 B. Preliminary Questions 48-58 Division of the Subjjict 59-85 x' CONTENTS THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. PART I. PAfiR The Conception of Keligion . 89-258 A. Of God . . . 90-100 B. The Eeligious Attitude . . . 101-210 I. The necessity of the religious standpoint . 105 II. The forms of the religious consciousness . 115 1. The form of feeling . . .118 2. Perception . . 13S 3. Idea, or ordinary thought . ... 142 III. The necessity and mediation of the religious attitude in the form of thought . . 155-210 1. The dialectic of idea . . 156 2. The mediation of the religious consciousness in itself .... ... 160 a. Immediate knowledge and mediation . .160 b. Mediated knowledge as observation and reflection 172 u. Finiteness in sensuous existence . . , 1 80 |3, Finiteness from the point of view of reflection 1 82 y. The rational way of looking at finiteness . 193 c. The transition to the speculative conception of religion . . . . -199 3. The speculative notion or conception of religion . 204 C. Worship or Cultus . . . 210-258 L Of faith . . .211 IL The definite character and special forms of worship, or cultus . . .229 . III. The relation of religion to the State . . . 246 CONTENTS PART IT. Definite Religion Division of the subject . 261 261-269 FIRST DIVISION. "The Beligion of Naturii: 270-349 1. Immediate religion 270-316 a. Magic . . . 290 b. The objectire characteristics of the religion of magic . . 298 c. Worship or cultiis in the religion of magic 316 II. The division of consciousness within itself . .317 I. The Chinese religion, or the religion of measure . 335 a. The general character of this rjsligion , 335 h. The historical existence of this religion 336 c. Worship or cultua 347-349 INTRODUCTION PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION It has appeared to me to be necessary to make religion by itself the object of philosophical consideration, and to add on this study of it, in the form of a special part, to philosophy as a whole. By way of introduction I shall, however, first of all (A) give some account of the sever- ance or division of consciousness, which awakens the need our science has to satisfy, and describe the r&lation of this science to philosophy and religion, as also to the prevalent principles of the religious consciousness. Then, after I have (B) touched upon some preliminary questions which follow from those relations, I shall give (C) the division of the subject. To begin with, it is necessary to recollect generally what object we have before us in the Philosophy of Eeligion, and what is our ordinary idea of religion. We know that in religion we withdraw ourselves from what is temporal, and that^Veligion is for our consciousness that region in which all the enigmas of the world are f solved, all the contradictions of deeper-reaching thought fi^- have their meaning unveiled, and where 'the voice of the heart's pain is silenced — the region of eternal truth, of eternal rest, of eternal peace/' Speaking generally, it is through thought, concrete thpught, or, oto put it more VOL. I. A 2 INTRODUCTION TO THE definitely, it is by reason of his being Spirit, that man is man ; and from man as Spirit proceed all the many -developments of the sciences and arts, the interests of political life, and all those conditions which have refer- :ence to man's freedom and will. But all these mani- fold forms of human relations, activities, and pleasures, and all the ways in which these are intertwined}^ all that has worth and dignity for man, all wherein he seeks his happiness, his glory, and his pride, finds its -ultimate centre in religion, in the thought, the conscious-' ness, and the feeling of God. Tlius God is the begin- jiing of all things, and the end of all things. As all things proceed from this point, so all return back to it again. He is the centre which gives life and quicken- ing to all things, and which animates and preserves in existence all the various forms of being. In religion man places himself in a relation to this centre, in which all other relations concentrate themselves, and in so doing he rises up to the highest level of consciousness and' to the region which is free from relation to what is other than itself, to something which is absolutely self-sufficient, the unconditioned, what is free, and is its own object and end.,- y Eeligion, as something which is occupied with this final object and end, is therefore absolutely free, and is its own end ; for all other aims converge in this ultimate end, and in presence of it they vanish and cease to have value of their own. No other aim can hold its ground against this, and here alone all fitid their fulfilment. In the region where the spirit occupies itself with this end, it unburdens itself of all finiteness, and wins for itself final satisfaction and deliverance; for here the spirit relates itself no longer to something that is other than itself, and that is limited, but to the unlimited and infinite, and this is an infinite relation, a relation of freedom, and no loriger' of dependence. Here its con- sciousness is absolutely free, and is indeed true conscious- PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 3 ness, because it is consciousness of 'absolute truth. In Its character as feelidg, this condition of freedom is the "sense of satisfaction which we call blessedness, while as activity it has nothing further to do than to manifest the honour of God and to reveal His, glory, and in tliis attitude it is no longer with himself that man is con- cerned — with his own interests or his empty pride — but with the absolute end. All the various peoples feel that it is in the religious consciousness they possess truth, and they have always regarded religion as constituting their true dignity and the Sabbath of their life. What- ever awakens in us doubt and fear, all sorrow, all care, all the limited interests of finite life, we leave behind on the shores of time ; and as from the highest peak of a mountain, far away from all definite view of what is earthly, we look down calmly upon all the limitations of the landscape and of the world, so with the spiritual eye man, lifted out of the hard realities of this actual world, contemplates it as something having only the semblance of existence, which seen from this pure region bathed in the beams of the spiritual sun, merely reflects back its shades of colour, its varied tints and lights, softened away into eternal rest. In this region of spirit flow the streams of forgetfulness from which Psyche drinks, and -in which she drowns all sorrow, while the dark things of this life are softened away into a dream-like vision, and become transfigured until they are a ijiere framework for the brightness of the Eternal. This image of the Absolute may have a more or less present vitality and certainty for the religious and devout mind, and be a present source of pleasure ; or it may be represented as something longed and hoped for, far off, and in the future. Still it always remains a certainty, and its rays stream as something divine into this present temporal life, giving the consciousness of the active pres- ence of truth, even amidst the anxieties which torment the soul here in this region of time. Paith recof^uises it 4 INTRODUCTION TO THE as the truth, as the substance of actual existing things ; andvVhat thus forms the essence of religious contempla- tion, is the vital force in the present world, makes itself actively felt in the life of the individual, and governs his entire conduct.' Such is the general perception, sensa- tion, consciousness, or however we nfay designate it, of religion. To consider, to examine, and to comprehend its nature is the object of the present lectures. We must first of all, however, definitely understand, in reference to the end we have in view, that it is not the concern of philosophy to produce religion in any in- dividual. Its existence is, on the ccJntrary, presupposed as forming what is fundamental in every one. So far as man's essential nature is concerned, nothing new is to be introduced into him. To try to do this would be as absurd as to give a dog printed writings to chew, under the idea that in this way you could put mind into it. He who has not extended his spiritiial interests beyond the hurry and bustle of this finite world, nor succeeded in lifting himself above this life through aspiration, through the anticipation, through the^feeling of the Eter- nal, and who has not gazed upon the pure ether of the soul, does not possess in himself that element which it is our object here to comprehend. It may happen that religion is awakened in the heart by means of philosophical knowledge^ "but it is not neces- sarily so. It is not the purpose of philosophy to edify, and quite as little is it necessary for it to make good its claims by showing in any particnlair case that it must produce religious feeling in the individual. Philosophy, it is true, has to develop the necessity of religion in and for itself, and to grasp the thought that Spirit must of necessity advance from the other modes of its will in conceiving and feeling to this absolute mode ; but it is the universal destiny of Spirit which is thus accomplished. It is another matter to raise up the individual subject to this height. The self-will, the perversity, or the indo- PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION J lence of iudividuals may interfere with the necessity of their universal spiritual nature ; individuals may deviate from it, and attempt to get for themselves a standpoint of their own, and hold to it. This possibility of letting oneself drift, through inertness, to the standpoint of un- truthj or of lingering there consciously and purposely, is involved in the freedom of the subject, while planets, plants, animals, cannot deviate from the , necessity of their nature — from their truth — and become what they ought to be. But in human freedom what is and what ought to be are separate. This freedom brings with it the power of free choice, and it is possible for it to sever itself from its necessity, from its laws, and to work in opposition to its true destiny. Therefore, although philo- sophical knowledge should clearly perceive the necessity of the religious standpoint, and though the will should learn in the sphere of reality the nullity of its separation, all this does not hinder the will from being able to per- sist in its obstinacy, and to stand aloof=from its necessity and truth. \^ There is a common and shallow manner of ar^i^uincr against cognition or philosophical knowledge, as when, for instance, it is said that such and such a man has a knowledge of God, and yet remains far from religion, and lias not become godly. It is not, however, the aim of knowledge to lead to this, nor is it meant to do so. What knowledge must do is to know religion as some- thing which already exists. It is neither its intention nor its duty to induce this or that person, any particular empirical subject, to be religious if he has not been so before, if he has nothing of religion in himself, and does not wish to have.*^ But the fact is, no man is so utterly ruined, so lost, and so bad, nor can we regard any one as being so wretched that he has no religion whatever in him, even if it were only that he has the fear of it, or some yearn- ing after it, or a feeling of hatred towards it. Eor even 6 INTRODUCTION TO THE in this last case he is inwardly occupied jvitli it, and cannot free himself from it.^-^ As man, religion is essen- tial to him, and is not a feeling foreign to his nature. Yet the essential question is the relation of religion to X his general theory of the universe, and it is with this that philosophical knowledge connects itself, and upon which it essentially works. In this relation we have the source of the division which arises in opposition to the primary absolute tendency of the spirit toward religion, and here, toa, all the manifold forms of consciousness, and their most widely differing connections with the main interest of religion, have sprung up. Before the Philosophy of Eeligion can sum itself up in its own peculiar conception, it must work itself through all those ramifi- cations of the interests of the time which have at present concentrated themselves in the widely-extended sphere \ of religion. At first the movement of the principles of i the time has its place outside of philosophical study, but this movement pushes ou to the point at which it comes into contact, strife, and antagonism with philosophy. We shall consider this opposition and its solution when we have examined the opposition as it still maintains itself outside of philosophy, and have seen it develop until it reaches that completed state where it involves philosophical knowledge in itself. THE RELATION OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION TO ITS PRESUPPOSITIONS AND TO THE PRINCIPLES OF THE TIME. I. — The Severance of Eeligion from the Free Worldly Consciousness. a. In the relation in which religion, even in its im- mediacy, stands to the other forms of the consciousness of man, there already lie germs of division, since both sides are conceived of as in a condition of separation PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 7 TGlatively to each other. In their simple relation they already constitute two kinds of pursuits, two different regions of consciousness, and we pass to and fro from the -one to the other alternalely only. Thus man has in his actual worldly life a number of working days during which he occupies himself with his own special interests, with worldly aims in general, and with the satisfaction "of his needs ; and then he has a Sunday, when he lays all this aside, collects his thoughts, and, released from absorption in finite occupations, lives "to himself and to the higher nature which is in him, to his true essential being. But into this separateness of the two sides there directly enters a double modification. (a.) Let us consider first of all the religion of the godly man ; that is, of one who truly deserves to be so called. Faith is still presupposed as existing irrespective of, and without opposition to, anything else. To believe in God js thus in its simplicity, something different from that where a man, with reflection and with the consciousness that something else stands opposed to this faith, says, "I believe in God." Here the need of justification, of in- ference, of controversy, has already come in. I^ow that religion of the simple, godly man is not kept shut off and divided from the rest of his existence and life, but, on the contrary, it breathes its influence over all his feel- ings and actions, and his consciousness brings all the aims and objects of his worldly life into relation to God, as to its infinite and ultimate source. Every moment of his finite existence and activity, of his sorrow and joy, is lifted up by him out of his limited sphere, and by being thus lifted up produces in him the idea and sense -of his eternal nature. The rest of his life, in like .manner, is led under the conditions of confidence, of custom, of dutifulness, of habit ; he is that which cir- cumstances and nature have made him, and he takes his life, his circumstances, and rights as he receives every- thing, namely, as a lot or destiny which he does not ■8 INTRODUCTION TO THE understand. It is so. In regard to God, he either takes what is His and gives thanks, or else he offers it up to Him freely as a gift, of free grace. The rest of his con- scious life is thus subordinated, without reflection, to that higher region, (/3.) From the worldly side, however, the distinction involved in this relation develops until it becomes oppo- sition. It is true that the development of this side does not seem to affect religion injuriously, and all action seems to limit itself strictly to that side in the matter. Judging from what is expressly acknowledged, religion is still looked upon as what is highest ; but as a matter of fact it is not so, and starting frora the worldly side, ruin and disunion creep over into religion. The develop- ment of this distinction may be generally designated as the maturing of the understanding and of human aims. While understanding awakens in human life and in science, and reflection has become independent, the will sets before itself absolute aims ; for example, justice, the state, objects which are to have absolute worth, to be in and for themselves. Thus research recognises the laws, the constitution, the order, and the peculiar characteris- tics of natural things, and of the activities and produc- tions of Spirit. Now these experiences and forms of knowledge, as well as the willing and actual carrying out of these aims, is a work of man, both of his understand- ing and will. In them he is in presence of what is his own. Although he sets out from what is, from what he fmds, yet he is no longer merely one who knows, who Jvas these rights; but what he maJces'ont of that which is given in knowledge and in will is his aff'air, Ms work, and he has the consciousness that he has produced it. Therefore these productions constitute his glory and his pride, and provide for him an immense, an infinite wealth — that world of his intelligeuce, of his knowledge, of his external possession, of his rights and deeds. Thus the spirit has entered into the^condition of oppo- PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 9 sition — as yet, it is true, artlessly, and ^vithout at first knowing it — but the opposition corals to be a cotiscious one, for the spirit now moves between two sides, of which the distinction has actually developed itself. The one side is that in which the spirit knows- itself to be its own, where it lives in its own aims and interests, and deter- mines itself on its own authority as independent and self- sustaining. The other side is that where the spirit re- cognises a higher Power — absolute duties, duties without rights belonging to them, and what the spirit receives for the accomplishment of its duties is always regarded as grace alone. In the first instance it is the independence of the spirit which is the foundation,! here its attitude is that of humility and dependence. Itso religion is accord- ingly distinguished from what we have in that region of independence by this, that it restricts knowledge, science, to the worldly side^ and leaves for the sphere of religion, feeling and faith, (7.) Notwithstanding, that aspect of independence in- volves this also, that its action is conditioned, and know- ledge and will must have experience of the fact that it is thus conditioned. Man demands his right ; whether or not he actually gets it, is something independent of his efforts, and he is referred in the matter to an Other. In the act of knowledge he sets out from the organisation and order of nature, and this is something giveii. The content of his sciences is a material outside of him. Thus the two sides, that of independence and that of conditionality, enter into relation with each other, and this -relation leads man to the avowal that everything is made by God — all things which constitute ^ the content of his knowledge, which he takes possession of, and uses as means for his ends, as well as he himself, the spirit and the spiritual faculties of which he, as he says, makes use, in order to attain to that knowledge. But this admission is cold and lifeless, because that which constitutes the vitality of this consciousness, ia Jo INTRODUCTION TO THE which it is " at home with itself," and is self-conscious- ness, this insight, this knowledge are wanting in ity^All that is determined comes, on the contrary, to be included in the sphere of knowledge, and of human, self-appointed aims, and here, too, it is only the activity belonging to self-consciousness which is present. Therefore that admission is unfruitful too, because it does not get beyond the abstract-universal, that is to say, it stops short at the thought that all is a work of God, and with regard to objects which are absolutely different (as, for example, the course of the stars and their laws, ants, or men), that relation continues for it fixed at one and the same point, namely this, that God has made all. Since this religious relation of particular = objects is always expressed in the same monotonous Tuanner, it would become tedious and burdensome if it were repeslted in reference to each individual thing. Therefore the matter is settled with the one admission, that God has made everything, and this religious side is thereby satisfied once for all, and then in the progress of knowledge and the pursuit of aims nothing further is thought of the matter. It would accordingly appear that this admission is made simply and solely in order to get rid of the whole busi- ness, or perhaps it may be to get protection for the religious side as it were relatively to what is without. In short, such expressions may be used either in earnest or not. Piety doe? not weary of lifting up its eyes to God on all and every occasion, although it may do so daily and hourly in the same manner. But as religious feel- ing, it really rests in singleness or single instances ; it is in every moment wholly what it is, and is without reflection and the consciousness which compares experi- ences. It is here, on the contrary, where knowledge and self-determination are concerned, that this com- parison, and the consciousness of that sameness, are essentially present, and then a general proposition is- PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION ti enunciated once for all. On the one side we have understanding playing its part, while oyer against it is the religious feeling of dependence. h. Even piety is not exempt from the, fate of falling into a state of division or dxialism. On the contrary, division is already present in it implicitly, in that its actual content is only a manifold, accidental one. These tw^o attitudes, namely, that of piety and of the under- standing that compares, however different they seem to be, have this in common, that in them the relation of God to the other side of consciousness is undeter- mined and . general. The second of these attitudes has indicated and pronounced this unhesitatingly in the expression already quoted, " God -has created all things." o (a.) The manner of looking at things, however, which is followed by the religious man, and whereby he gives a greater completeness to his reflection, consists in the contemplation of the constitution and arrangement of things according to the relations of ends ^ and similarly in the regarding all the circumstances of individual life, as well as the great events of history, as; proceeding from Divine purposes, or else as directed and leading back to such. The universal divine relation is thus not adhered to here. On the contrary, this becomes a definite rela- tion, and consequently a more strictly defined content is introduced — for the manifold materials are placed in relation to one another, and God is then considered as the one who brings about these relations. Animals and their surroundings are accordingly regarded as being& definitely regulated, in that they have food, nurture their young, are provided with weapons as a«°defence against what is hurtful, stand the winter, and c^n protect them- selves against enemies. In human life, it is seen how man is led to happiness, whether it be eternal or tem- poral, by means of this or that apparent accident, or perhaps misfortune. In short, the action, the will of 12 INTRODUCTION TO THE God, is contemplated here in definite dealings, conditions of nature, occurrences, and such-like. But this content itself, these ends, representing thus a finite content, are accidental, are taken up only for the moment, and even directly disappear in an inconsistent and illogical fashion. If, for example, we admire the wisdom of God in nature because we see how animals are provided with weapons, partly to obtain their food and partly to protect them against enemies, yet it is presently seen in experience that these weapons are of no avail, and that those creatures which have been considered as ends are made use of by others as means. It is therefore really progressive knowledge which has depreciated and supplanted this external contemplation of ends ; that higher knowledge, namely, which, to begin with, at least demands consistenci/j and recognises ends of this kind, which are taken as Divine ends, as subordinate and finite — as something which proves itself in the very same experience and observation to be worthless, and not to be an object of the eternal, divine Will. If that manner of looking at the matter be accepted, and if, at the same time, its inconsistency be disregarded, yet it still remains indefinite and superficial, for the very reason that all and every content — no matter what it be — may be included in it ; for ther-e is nothing, no arrangement of nature, no occurrence, which, regarded in some aspect or other, might not be shown to have some use. Eeligious feeling is, in short, here no longer pre- sent in its na'ive and experimental character. On the contrary, it proceeds from the universal thought of an end, of a good, and makes inferences, inasmuch as it subsumes present things under these universal thoughts. But this argumentation, this inferential process, brings the religious man into a condition of perplexity, because however much he may point to what serves a purpose, and is useful in this immediate world ~~ of natural things, PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 13 he sees, in contrast to all this, just as much that does not serve a purpose, and is injurious./ What is profitable to one person is detrimental to another,. and therefore does not serve a purpose. / The preservation of life and of the interests bound up with existence, which in the one case is promoted, is in the other case just as much endan- gered and put a stop to. Thus an^ implicit dualism or division is involved here, for in contradiction to God's eternal manner of operation, finite things are elevated to the rank of essential ends. The idea of God and of His manner of operation as universal and necessary is contra- dicted by this inconsistency, which is even destructive of that universal character. Now, if the religious man considers external ends and the externality of the whole matter in accordance with which these things are profitable for an Other, the natural determinateness, which is the point of departure, appears indeed to be only for an Other. But this, more closely considered, is its own relation, its- own nature, the immanent nature of what is related, its necessity, in short. Thus it is that the actual transition to the other side, which was formerly designated as the moment of selfness, comes about for ordinary religious thought. (|S.) Eeligious feeling, accordingly, is forced to abandon its argumentative process ; and now that a beginning has once been made with thought, and with the relations of thought, it becomes necessary, above all things to thought, to demand and to look for that which belongs to itself ; namely, first of all consistency and necessity, and to place itself in opposition to that standpoint of contingency. And with this, the principle of selfness at once develops itself completely. " I," as simple, universal, as thought, am really relation ; since I am for myself, am self- con- sciousness, the relations too are to be for me. To the thoughts, ideas which I make my own, I give the character which I myself am. I am this simple point, and that which is for me I seek to apprehend in this unity. 14 INTRODUCTION TO THE Knowledge so far aims at that which is, and the' necessity of it, and apprehends this in the relation of cause and effect, reason and result, power and manifesta- tion ; in the relation of the Universal, of the species and of the individual existing things which are included in the sphere of contingency. Knowledge, science, in this manner places the manifold material in mutual relation, takes away from it the contingency which it has through its immediacy, and while contemplating the relations which belong to the wealth of finite phenomena, encloses the world of finiteness in itself so as to form a system of the universe, of such a kind that knowledge requires nothing for this system outside of the system itself. For what a thing is, what it is in its essential determinate character, is disclosed when it is perceived and made the subject of observation, From the constitution of things, we proceed to their connections in which they stand in relation to an Other ; not, however, in ^n accidental, but in a determinate relation, and in which they point back to the original source from which they are a deduction. Thus we inquire after the reasons and causes of things ; and the meaning of inquiry here is, that what is desired is to know the special causes. Thus it is no longer suffi- cient to speak of God as the cause of the lightning, or of the downfall of the Eepublican system of government in Rome, or of the Trench Eevolution ; here it is per- ceived that this cause is only an entirely general one, and does not yield the desired explanation. What we wish to know regarding a jnatural phenomenon, or re- garding this or that law as effect or result, is, the reason as the reason of this particular phenomenon, that is to say, not the reason which applies to all things, but only and exclusively to this definite thing. And thus the reason must be that of such special phenomena, and such reason or ground must be the most immediate, must be sought and laid hold of in the flnite, and must itself be a finite one. Therefore this knowledge does not go PHILOSOPHY OF RELUGION 1.5 abbve or beyond the sphere of the finite, nor doe's it desire to do so, since it is able to apprehend all in its finite sphere, is conversant with everything, and knows its course of action. In this manner science forms a universe of knowledge, to which God is not necessary, which lies outside of religion, and has absolutely nothing to do with it. In this kingdom, knowledge spreads itself out in its relations and connections, and in so doing has all determinate material and content on its side ; and for the other side, the side of the infinite and the eternal, nothing whatever is left. (7.)\VThus both sides have developed themselves com- pletely in their opposition. On the side of religion the lieart is filled with what is Divine, but without freedom, or self-consciousness, and without consistency in regard to what is determinate, this latter having, on the contrary, the form of contingency. Consistent connection of what i^ determinate belongs to the side of knowledge, which is at home in the finite, and moves freely in the thought- determinations of the manifold connections of things, but can only create a system which is without absolute substantiality — without God^ The jreligious side gets the absolute material and purpose, but only as something abstractly positive. Knowledge has taken possession o£ all finite material and drawn it into its territory, all determinate content has fallen to its share-; but although it gives it a necessary connectiou, it is still unable to -give it the absolute connection. Si^ce finally science has taken possession of knowledge, and is the conscious- ness of the necessity of the finite, .religion has become devoid of knowledge, and has shrivelled„ up into simple feeling, into the coijtentless or empty elevation of the spiritual to the Eternal. It can, however, affirm nothing regarding the Eternal, for all that could be regarded as knowledge would be a drawing down of the Eternal into tlie sphere of the finite, and of finite connections of Ihinss. / i6 INTRODUCTION TO THE Now when two aspects of thoughtj which are so de- veloped in this way, enter into relation with one another, their attitude is one of mutual distrust. Eeligious feeling distrusts the finiteness which lies in knowledge, and it brings against science the charge of futility, because in it the subject clings to itself, is in itself, and the " I " as the knowing subject is independent in relation to all that is external. On the other hand, knowledge has a distrust of the totality in which feeling entrenches itself, and in ^ which it confounds together all extension and develop- ment. It is afraid to lose its freedom -should it comply with the demand of feeling, and unconditionally recognise a truth wliich it does not definitely understand. And when religious feeling comes out of its universality, sets ends before itself, and passes over to the determinate, knowledge can see nothing but arbitrariness in this, and if it were to pass in a similar way to -anything definite, would feel itself given over to mere contingency. When, accordingly, reflection is fully developeS, and has to pass over into the domain of religion, it is unable to hold out in that region, and becomes impatient -with regard to all that peculiarly belongs to it. cS Now that the opposition has arrived at this stage of development, where the one side, whenever it is approached by the other, invariably thrusts it away from it as an enemy, the necessity for an adjustment comes in, of such a kind that the infinite shall appear in the finite, and the finite in the infinite, and each no longer form a separate realm. This would be the reconcilia- > tion of religious, genuine simple feeling, with knowledge and intelligence. This reconciliation must correspond with the highest demands of knowledge, and of the Notion, for these can surrender nothing of their dignity. But just as little can anything of the absolute content be given up, and that content be brought down into the region of finiteness ; and when face to face with it knowledge must give up its finite form.^y PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 17 In the Christian religion, more than in other religions, the need of this reconciliation has of necessity come into prominence, for the following reasons:^ (a.) The Christian religion has its very beginning in ab- solute dualism or division, and starts from that sense of suffering iu which it rends the naturalunity of the spirit asunder, and destroys natural peace. In it man appears as evil from his birth, and is thus in his innermost life in contradiction with himself, and the spirit, as it is driven back into itself, finds itself separated from the infinite, absolute Essence. (/3.) The Reconciliation, the need or which is here in- tensified to the uttermost degree, appears in the first place for Faith, but not in such a way as to allow of faith being of a merely ingenuous kind. Eor the spirit has left its natural simplicity behind, and entered upon an internal con- flict ; it is, as sinful, an Other in opposition to the truth ; it is withdrawn, estranged from it. " I^" in this condition of schism, am not the truth, and this is therefore given as an independent content of ordinary thought, and the truth is in the first instance put forward upon authority. (y.) When, however, by this means I am transplanted into an intellectual world in which the nature of God, the characteristics and modes of action which belong to God, are presented to knowledge, and when the truth of these rests on the witness and assurance of others, yet I am at the same time referred into myself^ for thought, knowledge, reason are in me, and in thejeeling of sinful- ness, and in reflection upon this, my freedom is plainly revealed to me. Eational knowledge,^ therefore, is an essential element in the Christian religion itself. In the Christian religion I am to retain my freedom or rather,. in it I am to become free. In it the subject, the salvation of the soul, the redemption of the individual as an individual, and not only the species, is an essential end. This subjectivity, this sel/ness (not selfishness) is just the principle- of rational knowledge itself. VOL. I, B \t8 introduction TO THE Eational knowledge being thus a fundamental charac- teristic in the Christian religion, the latter gives develop- ment to its content, for the ideas regarding its general -subject-matter are implicitly or in themselves thoughts, and must as such develop themselves. On the other^ handj however, since the contend is something which exists essentially for the mind as forming ideas, it is distinct from unreflecting opinion and sense-knowledge, and as it were passes right beyond the distinction. In short, it has in relation to subjectivity the value of an absolute content existing in and for itself*VV The Christian -religion therefore touches the antithesis between feeling and immediate perception on the one hand, and reflection ■■ and knowledge on the other. It (Contains rational know- ledge as an essential element, and has supplied to this rational knowledge the occasion for developing itself to its full logical issue as Porm and as a world of form, and has thus at the same time enabled it to place itself in oppo- sition to this content as it appears in the shape of given truth. It is from this that the discord which charac- terises the thought of the present day arises. ^ Hitherto we have considered the progressive growth of the antitheses only in the form in which they have not yet developed into actual philosophy, or in which they still stand outside of it. Therefore the questions which primarily come before us are these : i. How does philosophy in general stand related to religion ? 2. How does the Philosophy of E^ligion stand related to philosophy? and 3. What is the relation of the philo- sophical study of, religion to positive religion ? II. — The Position of the Philosophy of Eeligion rela- tively TO Philosophy and to Eeligion. I. The Attitude of FhilosopJiy to JReligion generally/. In saying above tliat philosophy makes religion the subject of consideration, and when further this considera- PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 19 -tion of it appears to be ia the position of soraetbing which is different from its object, it would seem as if we are still occupying that attitude in which both sides remain mutually independent and separate. In taking up such an attitude in thus considering the subject, we should accordingly come out of that region of devotion and enjoyment which religion is, and the object and the consideration of it as the movement of thought would be as different as, for example, the geometrical figures in mathematics are from the mind which considers them. Such is only the relation, however, as it at first appears, when knowledge is still severed from the religious side, and is finite knowledge. On the contrary, when we look more closely, it becomes apparent that as a matter of' fact the content, the need, and the interest of philosophy^, represent something which it has in common with religion.! .\' The object of religion as well as of philosophy is eternal truth in its objectivity, God and nothing but God, / and the explication of God. Philosophy is not a wisdom of the world, but is knowledge of what is not of the world ; it is not knowledge which concerns external mass, or empirical existence and life,obut is knowledge \^^ of that which is eternal, of what God is, and what flows out of His nature. For this His nature must reveal and develop itself. Philosophy, therefore, only unfolds itself when it unfolds religion, and in unfolding itself it Unfolds religion.'/ As thus occupied with eternal truth which exists on its own account, or is in and for itself, and, as in fact, a dealing on the part of the thinking spirit, and not of individual caprice and'particular interest, ■with this object, it is the same kind of activity as religion is. The mind in so far as it thinks philosophically immerses itself with like living interest in this object, and renounces its particularity in that it permeates its object, in the same way, as religious consciousness does, for the latter also does not seek to have anything of its ©WD, but desires only to immerse itself in this content. 20 INTRODUCTION TO THE ^ Thus religion and philosopLy come to be one. Philo- sophy is itself, in fact, worship ; it is religion, for in the same way it renounces subjective notions and opinions in order to occupy itself with Goa. Philosophy is thus identical with religion, but the distinction is that it is so in a peculiar manner, distinct from the manner of looking at things which is commonly called religion as such. What they have in common is, that they are religion ; what distinguishes them from each other is merely the kind and manner of religion we find in each. It is in the peculiar way in which they both occupy themselves with God that the distinction comes out. It is just here, however, that the difficulties lie which appear so great, that it is even regarded as an impos- sibility that philosophy should be one with religion. Hence comes the suspicion with which philosophy is looked upon by theology, and the antagonistic attitude of religion and philosophy. In accordance with this antagonistic attitude (as theology considers it to be) philosophy seems to act injuriously, destructively, upon religion, robbing it of its sacred character, and the way in which it occupies itself with God seems to be absolutely different from religion. Here, then, is the same old opposition and contradiction which had already made its appearance among the Greeks. Among that free democratic people, the Athenians, philosophical writings were burnt, and Socrates was condemned to death ; now, however, this opposition is held to be an acknowledged fact, more so than that unity of religion and philosophy just asserted. \^01d though this opposition is, however, the combina^ tion of philosophy and religion is just as old. Already to the neo-Pythagoreans and neo-Platonists, who were as yet within the heathen world, the gods of the people were not gods of imagination, but had become gods of thought. That combination had a place, too, among the most eminent of the Fathers of thp Church, who in their PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION -zi- religious life took up an essentially intellectual attitude inasmuch as they set out from the presupposition that theology is religion together with conscious thought and comprehension. It is to their philosophical culture that the Christian Church is indebted for the first beginnings of a content of Christian doctrine. N'^This union of religion and philosophy was carried out to a still greater extent in the Middle Ajres. So little was it believed that the knowledge which seeks to com- prehend is hurtful to faith, that it was even held to be essential to the further development of faith itself. It was by setting out from philosophy that- those great men, Anselm and Abelard, further developed the essential characteristics of faith. Knowledge in constructing its world for itself, with- out reference to religion, had only taken possession of the finite contents ; but since it has developed into the true philosophy, it has the same content as religion. If we now look provisionally for the distinction between religion and philosophy as it presents itself in this unity of content, we find it takes the following form : — ■ '^^ a, A speculative philosophy is the consciousness of the Idea, so that everything is apprehended as Idea ; the Idea, however, is the True in thought, and nof^-in mere sensuous contemplation or in ordinary conception. The True in thought, to put it more precisely, means that it is some- thing concrete, posited as divided in itself, and in such away, indeed, that the two sides of what is divided are opposed characteristics of tho'ught, and the Idea must be conceived of as the unity of these.'^^To think speculatively means to resolve anything real into its parts, and to oppose these to each other in such a way that the distinctions are set in opposition in accordance with the characteristics ofi thought, and the object is apprehended as unity of the two.) In sense-perception or picture-thought we have the object before us as a whole, our reflection distinguishes, apprehends different sides, recognises the diversity iu 22" INTRODUCTION TO THE them, and severs them. In this act of distinguishing, reflection does not keep firm hold of their unity. Some- times it forgets the wholeness, sometimes the distinctions ; and if it has both before it, it yet separates the proper- ties from the object, and so places both that that in whicli the two are one becomes a third, which is different from the object and its properties. In the case of mechanical objects which appear in the region of externality, this relation may have a place, for the object is only the life- less substratum for the distinctions, and the quality of oneness is the gathering together of external aggregates. In the true object, however, which is not merely an aggre- gate, an externally united multiplicity, the object is one, although it has characteristics wliich are distinguished from it, and it is speculative thought which first gets a c^rasp of tlie unity in this very antithesis as such. It is in fact the business of speculative thought to apprehend all objects of pure thought, of nature and of Spirit, in the form of thought, and thus as the unity of the difference, f/ h. Eeligion, then, is itself the standpoint of the con- sciousness of the True, which is in and for itself, and is consequently the stage of Spirit at which the speculative content generally, is object for consciousness. ^ Religion is not consciousness of this or that truth in individual objects, ^ but of the absolute truthjCof truth as the Universal, the All-comprehending, outside of which there lies nothing at all. The content of its consciousness is further the Universally True, which exists on its own account or in and for itself, which determines itself, and is not deter- mined from without. While the finite required an Other y for its determinateness, the True has its determinateness, the limit, its end in itself ; it is not limited through an Other, but the Other is found in itgelf. It is this specu- lative element which comes to consciousness in religion. Truth is, indeed, contained in every -other sphere, but not the highest absolute truth, for this exists only in perfect universality of characterisation or determination, and in PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 23 -the fact of being determined in and for itself, which is not -simple determinateness having reference to an Other, but contains the Other, the difference in its very self. c, Eeligion is accordingly this speculative element in the form, as it were, of a state of consciousness, of which the aspects are not simple qualities of thought, but are concretely filled up. These moments can be no other than the moment of Thought, active universality, thought in operation, and reality as immediate, particular self- consciousness. Now, while in philosophy the rigidity of these two sides loses itself through reconciliatibn in thought, be- cause both sides are thoughts, and the one is not pure universal thought, and the other of an empirical and individual character, religion only arrives at the enjoy- ment of unity by lifting these two rigid extremes out of this state of severance, by rearranging them, and bring- ing them together again. But by thus stripping off the form of dualism from its extremes, rendering the opposi- ition in the element of Universality fluid, and bringing it to reconciliation, religion remains always akin to thought, even in its form and movement ; and philosophy, as simply active thought, and thought which unites opposed elements, has approached closely to religion. The contemplation of religion in thought has thus raised the determinate moments of religion to the rank of thoughts, and the question is how this contemplation of religion in thought is related generally to philosophy as forming an organic part in its system. 2. The Relation of the Philosophy df Religion to the System of Fhilosophy. a. In philosophy, the Highest is called the Absolute, the Idea ; it is superfluous to go furtlter back here, and ■to mention that this Highest was in the Wolfian Philo- sophy called ens, Thing 5 for that at once proclaims itself 24 INTRODUCTION TO THE an abstraction, ■which corresponds very inadequately to our idea of God. In the more recent philosophy, the Absolute is not so complete an abstractioUj but yet it has not on that account the same signification as is implied in the term, God. In order even to make the difference apparent, we must in the first place consider what the word signify itself signifies. When we ask, " "What does this or that signify ? " we are asking about two kinds of things, and, in fact, ab„out things which are opposed. In the first place, we call what we are think- ing of, the meaning, the end or infiention, the general thought of this or that expression, work of art, &c. ; if we ask about its intrinsic character, it is essentially the thought that is in it of which we wish to have an idea. When we thus ask "What is God?" "What does the expression God signify ? " it is the thought involved in it that we desire to know ; the idea we possess already. Accordingly, what is signified here is that we have got to specify the Notion, and thus it follows that the Notibn is the signification ; it is the Absolute, the nature of God as grasped by thought, the logical knowledge of this, to which we desire to attain. This, then, is the one significa- tion of signification, and so far, that which we call the Absolute has a meaning identical with the expression God. 6. But we put the question again, in a second sense, according to which it is the opposite of this which is sought after. When we begin to occupy ourselves with pure thought-determinations, and not with outward ideas, it may be that the mind does not feel satisfied, is not at home, in these, and asks what this pure thought-deter- mination signifies. For example, every one can under- stand for himself what is meant hj the terms unity, objective, subjective, &c., and yet it may very well happen that the specific form of thought we call the unity of subjective and objective, the unity of real and ideal, is not understood. What is asked for in such a case is the meaning in the very opposite sense from that PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 2C ■which was required before. Here it is aa idea or a pictorial conception of tlie thought-determination which is demanded, an example of the content;^ which has as yet only been given in thought. If we find a thought- content difficult to understand, the difficu'lty lies in this, that we possess no pictorial idea of it ; it is by means of an example that it becomes clear . to us, and that the mind first feels at home with itself in this content. When, accordingly, we start with the ordinary conception of God, the Philosophy of Keligion has to consider its signification — this, namely, that God is the Idea, the Absolute, the Essential Eeality which is grasped in thought and in the Notion, and this it iias in common with logical philosophy ; the logical Idea is God as He is in Himself. But it is just the nature of God tliat He should not be implicit or in Himself only. He is as essentially for Himself, the Absolute Spirit, not only the Eeing who keeps Himself within thought, but who also manifests Himself, and gives Himself objectivity. c. Thiis, in contemplating the Idea of God, in the Philosophy of Eeligion, we have at the same time to do with the manner of His manifestation or presentation to us ; He simply makes Himself apparent, represents Him- self to Himself. This is the aspect of the determinate being or existence of the Absolute. v In the Philosophy of Eeligion we have thus the Absolute as object; not, however, merely in the form of thought, but also iu the form of its manifestation. The universal Idea is thus to be conceived of with the purely concrete meaning of essentiality in general, and is to be regarded from the point of view of its activity in displaying itself, in appear- ing, in revealing itself. Popularly speaking, we say God is the Lord of the natural world and of the realm of Spirit. He is the absolute harmony of the two, and it is He who produces and carries on this harmony. Here neither, thought and Notion nor their manifesta- tion — determinate being or existence -^ are wanting. 26 INTRODUCTION TO THE This aspect, thus represented by determinate being, is itself, however, to be grasped again in thought, since we are here in the region of philosophy. Philosophy to begin with contemplates the Absolute as logical Idea, the Idea as it is in thought, under the aspect in which its content is constituted by the specific forms of thought. Further, philospphy exhibits the Absolute in its activity, in its creations. This is the manner in whicli the Absolute becomes actuah or "for itself," becomes Spirit^ and God is thus the result of philosophy. It becomes apparent, however, that this is not merely a result, but is something which eternally creates itself, and is that which precedes all else. The onesidedness of the result is abrogated and absorbed in the very result itself. Nature, finite Spirit, the world of consciousness, of in- telligence, and of will, are embodiments of the divine Idea, but they are definite shapes, special modes of the appearance of the Idea, forms, in which the Idea has not yet penetrated to itself, so as to be absolute Spirit. In the Philosophy of Eeligion, however, we do not con- template the implicitly existing logical Idea merely, in its determinate character as pure thought, nor in those finite determinations where its mode of appearance is a finite one, but as it is in itself or implicitly in thought, and at the same time as it appears, manifests itself, and thus in infinite manifestation as Spirit, which reflects itself in itself; for Spirit which does not appear, is not. In this characteristic of appearance finite appearance is also included — that is, the world of nature, and the world of finite spirit, — but Spirit is regarded as the power or force of these worlds, as producing them out of itself, and out of them producing itself. N^This, then, is the position of the Philosophy of Eeligion in relation to the other parts of philosophy. Of the other parts, God is the result ; here, this End is made the Beginning, and becomes our special Object, as the simply concrete Idea, with its infinite manifestations; PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION ly and this characteristic concerns the content of the Philosophy of Eeligion. We look at this content, how- ever, from the point of view of rational thought, and this concerns the form, and brings us to consider tlie position of the Philosophy of Eeligion with regard to religion as this latter appears in the shape of positive religion. 3. The Rdation of the Philosophy of Beligion to Positive Religion. It is well known that the faith of the Church, more especially of the Protestant Church, has taken a fixed form as a system of doctrine. This content has been "universally accepted as truth; and as the description of what God is, and of what man is in^ relation to God, it has been called the Greed, that is, in the subjective sense that which is believed, and objectively, what is to be known as content^ in the Christian Church, and what God has revealed Himself to be. „Kow as universal established doctrine this content is partly laid down in the Apostolic Symholum or Apostles' Creed, partly in later symbolical books. And moreover, in the Protestant Church the Bible has always been characterised as the essential foundation of doctrine. a. Accordingly, in the apprehension and determina- tion of the content of doctrine, the influence of reason, as " argumentation " has made itself felt. At first indeed, this was so much the case that the doctrinal content, and the Bible as its positive foundation, were to remain unquestioned, and thought was only to take up the thoughts of the Bible as Exegesis, But as a matter of fact understanding had previously established its opinions and its thoughts for itself, and then attention was directed towards, observing how the words of Scrip- ture could be explained in accordance with these. The words of the Bible are a statement of truth which is not 28 INTRODUCTION TO THE systematic; they are Christianity as it appeared in the beginning; it is Spirit -which grasps the content, which unfolds its meaning. This exegesis having thus taken counsel with reason, the result has been that a so-called Theology of Eeason "^ has now come iiito existence, which is put in opposition to that doctrinal system of the Church, partly by this theology itself, and partly by that doctrinal system to which it is opposed. At the same time, exegesis takes possession of the written word, interprets it, and pretends only to lay stress on the understanding of the word, and to desire to remain faithful to it. But whether it be chiefly to save appearances, or whether it is really and in downright earnest that the Bible is made the foundation, it is inherent in the very nature of any explanation wh-ich interprets, that thought should have its part in it. Thought explicitly contains categories, principles, premises, which must make their influence felt in the work of interpretation. If interpretation be not mere explanation of words but explanation of tlie sense, the thoughts of the interpreter must necessarily be put into the words which constitute the foundation. Mere word -interpretation can only amount to this, that for one word another co-extensive in meaning is substituted ; but in the course of explanation further categories of thought are combined with it. Por a development is advance to further thoughts. In ap- pearance the sense is adhered to, but in reality further thoughts are developed, h Commentaries on the Bible do ..not so much make us acquainted with the content of the ^ Scriptures, as rather with the manner in which things were conceived in the age in which they were written. ^/ It is, indeed, the sense contained in ^the words which is supposed to be given. The giving of the sense means, however, the bringing forward of the sense into conscious- ness, into the region of ideas ; and these ideas, which get determinate character elsewhere, then assert their influence ^ Vernunft Tkeologie, PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 29 in the exposition of the sense supposed *to be contained in the words. It is the case even in the^ presentation of a philosophical system which is already fully developed, as, for example, that of Plato or of Aristotle, that the pre- sentation takes a different form, according to the definite kind of idea which those who undertake thus to expound it have already formed themselves. Accordingly, the most contradictory meanings have been exegetically demon- strated by means of Theology out of the Scriptures, and thus' xhe so-called Holy Scriptures have been made into a ^nose of wax. All heresies have, in common with the Church, appealed to the Scriptures, ^/ h. The Theology of Eeason, which thus came into existence, did not, however, limit itself to being merely an exegesis which kept to the Bible as its foundation, but in its character as free, rational knowledge assumed a certain relation to religion and its content generally. In this more general relation the dealing with the subject and the result can amount to nothing more than to the taking .possession by such knowledge of all that, in religion, has a determinate character. For the doctrine concerning God goes on to that of the characteristics, the attributes, and the actions of God. Such knowledge takes posses- sion of this determinate content, and would make it appear that it belongs to it. It, on the one hand, con- ceives of the Infinite in its own finite fashion, as some- thing which has a determinate character, as an abstract infinite, and then on the other hand finds that all special attributes are inadequate to this Infinite. By such a mode of proceeding the religious content is annihilated, and the absolute object reduced to complete poverty. The finite and determinate which this knowledge has drawn into its territory, points indeed to a Beyond as existing for it, but even this Beyond is conceived of by it in a finite manner, as an abstract, supreme Being, possessing no character .at all. " Enli family, or individual has been doomed to destruction because they despised the gods ; that adoration of the gods, on the other hand, and reverence towards them preserve states, and make them prosperous ; and that the happiness and advancement of individuals are furthered by their being religious. \^ Undoubtedly it is only when religion is made the foundation that the practice of righteousness attains stability, and that the fulfilment of duty is secured. It is in religion that what is deepest in man, the con- science, first feels that it lies under an absolute obligation, and has the certain knowledge of this obligation ; there- fore the State must rest on religion, for it is in religion we first have any absolute certainty and security as regards the dispositions of men, and duties they owe to THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION 703 the State. From every other kind of obligation it is possible to find a way of escape by means of excuses, exceptions, or counter reasons. Obligations other than the religious one may be evaded by disparaging the laws and regulations of the state, or by belittleing the individuals who govern and who are in. authority, and by regarding them from a point of view from which they are iio longer necessarily objects of respect. For all these par- ticular obligations have not only an essential existence as law, but have at the same time a finite existence in the present. They are so constituted as to invite the in- vestigation of reflection, and to allow it either to find fault with or to justify them, and they thus awaken the criticism of the individual, who can in turn grant himself a dispensation from them. It is only religion which suppresses all this subjective criticism and weighing of reasons, annihilates it, and brings in this infinite, absolute obligation of which we have spoken. Iashort,reverence for God, or for the gods, establishes and preserves individuals, families, states ; while contempt of God, or of the gods, loosens the basis of laws and duties, breaks up the ties of . the family and of the State, and leads to their destruction. ^ These are undoubtedly considerations: of the highest truth and importance, and contain the essential, substantial con- nection between religion and morality.- Now if a deduc- tion be made from the proposition beTore us stating as the result of experience that religion is therefore necessary, this would be an external kind of conclusion. Possibly, however, it might only be faulty in respect of the subjec- tive act of apprehension, no false or misleading turn being given to the content or matter of the assertion. If, however, the conclusion be now stated thus : " therefore religion is useful for the ends set before them by indi- viduals, governments, states," &c., then an attitude is at once taken up by which religion is treated as a means. But in religion we have to do with Spirit, which is many-sided in its activities. Even the animal organism, 104 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION when attacked by any disease, though its reaction to a remedy is determined by definite laws, is yet indifferent to many of its particular properties, so that a choice ot" remedies is possible. Still more does Spirit degrade what it employs as means to a mere matter of detail. It is then conscious of its freedom to use either one particular means or some other. Thus if religion be a means, the spirit knows tliat it can make use of it ; knows, too, that it can, however, have recourse to other means. Indeed the spirit stands in such a relation to religion that it may, if it likes, resolve to trust to its own resources. Further, the spirit has the freedom of its aims — its power, its cunning, the control of the opinions of men; these are all means, and just in the very freedom of its aims, which implies in so many words that its aims are to be the ultimate standard, and religion is to be only a means, it has the freedom to make its own power and authority its object, and thus to set ends before itself in pursuit of which it can either dispense with religion or even act in direct opposition to its behests. The point of import- ance, on the contrary, is that the spirit should resolve upon such aims, or should know its obligation to pursue such as are of value objectively in:and for themselves, to the disregard of others which are more enticing, and at the sacrifice of particular ends in general. Objective aims demand the giving up of subjective interests, inclinations, and ends ; and this sacrifice or negation is involved in the statement, that the worship of God lays the foundation of the true wellbeing of individuals, peoples, and states. Even though the latter be the con- sequence of the former, yet it is the former which is the principal thing ; it has its own determination and deter- rainateuess, and it regulates the purposes and opinions of men, which as particular things are not what is primary, and ought not to be allowed to determine themselves. Thus a slight turn given to the position of reflection THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION 105 alters and entirely destroys its first meaning above referred to, and makes out of the necessity a mere utility which, as being contingent, is capable ot- being perverted. Here we are concerned, on the contrary, with the inner necessity, which exists in and for itself ; a neces- sity to which, indeed, there is no doubt that caprice — evil — is able to oppose itself; but in this case this caprice belongs to a sphere outside, attaching itself to the Ego, which, as free, is able to take its stand oh the summit of its own independent individuality. Such caprice is no longer connected with the neces- sity of which we speak ; it is no longer the perversion of the very notion of necessity, as is the case so long as necessity is understood merely as utility. I.^TlIE iSTEOESSITY OF THE ReLIGIOUS STANDPOINT. \' Tiie general necessity of the Notion accordingly de- velops itself in this wise. Eeligion is (i) conceived of as result, but (2) as a result which at the same time annuls itself as result, and that (3) it is the content itself which passes over in itself and through itself to posit itself as result. That is objective necessity, and not a mere subjective process. It is not we who set the necessity in movement ; on the contrary, it is the act of the content itself, or, the object may be said to produce itself. Subjective deduction and intellectual movement occur, for example, in geometry ; the triangle does not itself go through the process that we follow out in the intellectual act of demonstration. // \ Eeligion, however, as something essentially spiritual, is by its very existence itself this process and this transi- tion. In the case of natural things, as, for example, the sun, we are in presence of an immediate existence at rest, and in the mental picture or idea we form of it there is no consciousness of an act of passing over, or transition. The religious consciousness, on the other hand. ic6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION is in its very essence the parting from and forsaking of what is immediate, what is finite ; it is a passing over to the intellectual, or, objectively defined, the gathering up of what is perishable into its absolute substantial essence. Eeligion is the consciousness of what is in and for itself true, in contrast to sensuous, finite truth, and to sense perceptions. Accordinglyj it is a rising above, a reflect- ing upon, a transition from what is immediate, sensuous, individual (for the immediate is what is first, and there- fore is not exaltation), and is thus a going out and on to an Other. This does not mean, however, a going on to a Third, and so on, for in that case the Other would be itself again something finite, and not an Other. Con- sequently it is a progress onward to a Second, but of such a kind that this progress, this production of a Second, annuls and absorbs itself, and this Second is rather the First, that which is truly unmediated and unposited or in- dependent. The standpoint of religion shows itself in this transition as the standpoint of truth, in which the whole wealth of the natural and spiritual world is contained. Every other manner in which this wealth of being exists must prove itself to be, in comparison, an external, arid, miserable, self-contradictory, and destructive mode of reality which involves the ending of truth, and has in it the note of untruth, a mode of reality which only returns to its foundation and its source as the standpoint of religion. By this demonstration, then, it is made clearly apparent that Spirit cannot stop short at any of these stages, nor can it remain there, and that it is only religion which is the true reality or actuality of self- consciousness. So far as the proof of this necessity is concerned, the following remarks may be sufficient. \v.When it has to be shown in regard to anything that it is necessary, it is implied that we start from something else, from an Other. What is here the Other of the true divine existence is non-divine existence, the THE CONCEPTION OF .RELIGION 107 finite world, finite consciousness. Now if we are to begin from this as tlie immediate, the finite, the untrue, and in fact as an object of our knowledge, and as imme- diately apprehended by us in its definite qualitative existence, if we begin in this manner from what is First, we find that it shows itself, as we proceed, not to be what it directly presents itself as being, but is seen to be something which destroys itself, which appears as be- coming, as moving on to something else. Therefore it is not our reflection and study of the subject, our judgment, which tells us that the finite with which we begin is founded on something that is true. It is not we who bring forward its foundation. On the contrary, the movement of the finite itself shows that it loses itself in something other, in something higher than itself. We follow the object as it returns of itself to the fountain of its true being. ^^ Now, while the object which forms the starting-point perishes in this, its true Source, and sacrifices itself, this does not mean that it has vanished in this process. Its content is, on the contrary, posited in its ideal character. We have an example of this absorption and ideality in consciousness. \u relate myself to an object, and then contemplate it as it is. The object, which I at once distinguish from myself, is independent ; I have not made it, it did not wait for me in order to exist, and 'it remains although I go away from it. Both, I and the object, are therefore two independent things, but consciousness is at the same time the relation of these two independent things to each other, a relation in which they appear as one. In that I have knowledge of the object, these two, I and the Other, exist for me in ^this my simple deter- minate character. If we rightly grasp what takes place here, we have not only the negative result that the one- ness and independence of the two is done away with. The annulling which takes place is not only empty nega- tion, but the negation of those two things from which I io8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION started. The non-existence here is thus only the non- existence of the independence of the two — the non-exist- ence in which both deterrainatipns are abrogated, yet preserved and ideally contained. Should we now desire to see how in this manner the natural universe and the spiritual universe return to their truth in the religious standpoint, the^ detailed considera- tion of this return would constitute the whole circle of the philosophical sciences. We should have to begin here with Nature ; it is the immediate ; Spirit would in that case be opposed to Nature, an^d both, in so far as they confront one other as independent, are finite. We may here, accordingly, distinguish between two ways of considering the matter. In the first place, we might consider what Nature and Spirit are in themselves, or ideally. This would show that potentially they are identical in the one Idea, and both only reflect what is one and the same, or, we might say, that they have their one root in the Idea. But this would still be an abstract way of looking at them, being limited to what these objects are ^potentially, and not implying that they are conceived of according to the Idea and reality. The distinctions which essentially belong to the Idea would be left unregarded. This absoFute Idea is the element of necessity, is J^he essence of both Nature and Spirit, and in it what constitutes their differ- ence, their limit and finiteness, drops away. The Essence of Spirit and of Nature is one and the same, and in this identity they are nothing more than what they are in their separation and qualitative existence. It is, how- ever, our act of knowledge which, in this way of looking at them, strips these two of their difference, and does away with their finiteness. It is outside of these limited worlds that they are limited, and that their limit dis- appears in the Idea which is their unity. This disap- pearance of the limit is an abstracting from it which takes place in our act of cognition ^or knowledge. We THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION icg do away witli the form of its finiteness, and come to its truth. This way of conceiving of the matter is so far rather of a subjective kind, and that which presents itself as being the truth of this finiteness is the self- existing Idea — the Substancej according to Spinoza, or the Absolute, as it was conceived of by Schelling. \\Both natural things and the spiri^tual world are shown to be finite, so that what is true is the vanishing of their limits in Absolute Substance, -and the recognition of the fact that this substance is the absolute identity of the two, of Subjective and Objective, of Thought and Being. But Substance is merely this identity. The specific form and quality is taken away by us, and does not appear in Substance, which is therefore rigid, cold, motionless necessity, in which knowledge, subjectivity, cannot find satisfaction, because it does not recognise in it its own vitality and distinctions^ This phenomenon is seen in all ordinary acts of devotion. We rise above finiteness, we forget it ; but yet it is not truly done away with simply because we have forgotten it.^^ The second method consists in a recognition of the necessity by which the self -abrogation of the finite, and the positing of the Absolute, take place objectively. It must be shown of Xature and "Spirit that they^ in accordance with their notion, abrogate or annul them- selves, and their finiteness must not be taken from them merely by a subjective removal of their limits. Here then we have the movement of thought, which is like- wise the movement of the thing itself, or true reality, and it is the very process of Nature and of Spirit out of which proceeds the True. a. We have now, therefore, to consider ISTature as it really is in itself — as the process of which the transition to Spirit is the ultimate truth, so that Spirit proves itself to be the truth of iTature. It is the essential character of Nature to sacrifice itself, to consume itself, so that the Psyche comes forth out of this burnt-offerin^But we so conceive of the consciousness of God that the content is our idea, and at the^ same time exists ; that is, the content is not merely mine, is not merely in the subject, in myself, in my idea and knowledge, but has _ an absolute existence of its own, exists in and for itself^' This is essentially involved in the content itself in this case. God is this Universality which has an absolute existence of its own, and does not exist merely for me ; it is outside of me, independent of me. "x^There are thus two points bound up together here. This content is at once independent and at the same time inseparable from me ; that is, it "is mine, and yet it is just as much not mine.^/ Certainty is this immediate relation between the con- tent and myself. If I desire to express such certainty in a forcible manner, I say " I am as certain of this as of my own existence." Both (the certainty of this external Being and the certainty of myself) are one certainty, and I would do away with my own Being, I should have no knowledge of myself if I were to do away with that THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION iiy Being. This unity thus involved in the certainty is the nseparability from me of this content which yet is differ- 'ent from me and myself; it is the inseparability of two ;hings which are yet distinguished from one another. It is possible to stop here, and it has even been main- iained that we are compelled to stop at this certainty. k distinction, however, at once suggests itself to people's ninds here, and it is one which is made in connection ff'ith everything. A thing, it is said, may be certain, but ":t is another question whether it is tTnce. The truth is lere opposed to the certainty ; from the fact that a thing s certain, it does not necessarily follow that it is true.^ The immediate form of this certainty is that of faith. ^'aith, indeed, directly involves an antithesis ; and this Lutithesis is more or less indefinite. It is usual to put 'aith in contrast with knowledge. Now, if it be wholly )pposed to knowledge, we get an empty antithesis. What '. believe, I also know ; it is contained in my conscious- less. Paith is a form of knowledge, .but by knowledge s usually understood a mediated knowledge, a know- edge involving clear apprehension. To put it more definitely, certainty is called faith, )artly in so far as this is not an immediate, sensuous icrtainty, and partly, too, in so far as this knowledge is lot a knowledge of the necessity or necessary nature of , content. What I see immediately before me, that I :qow ; I do not believe that there is a sky above me ; I ee it. On the other hand, if I have rational insight into he necessity of a thing, in this case, too, I do not say '' I lelieve," as, for example, in the theorem of Pythagoras, n this case it is assumed that a person does not merely ,ccept the evidence of a thing on authority, but that he Las seen into its truth for himself. In recent times, faith has been taken to mean a cer- ainty which stands in contrast with the perception of he necessary nature- of an object. This, especially, is he meaning attached to faith by Jacobi. Thus, says Ii8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Jacobi, we only believe that we have a body, we do not know it. Here knowledge has the more restricted meaning of knowledge of necessity .„ When I say " I see this," — '' this/' says Jacobi, is only a belief, for I perceive, I feel ; and such sensuous knowledge is entirely immediate and unmediated, it is no reasoned principle. Here faith has in fact the meaning of immediate certainty. Thus the expression *' faith " is principally used to express the certainty that a God exists, in so far as we do not have any perception of the neeessity of what con- stitutes God. In so far as the necessity of the content, its proved existence, is called the Objective, objective knowledge, or cognition, so far is faith something sub- jective. We believe in God in so far as we have not a perception of the necessity of this content which implies that He is what He is. It is customary to say that we must believe in God, because we have no immediate or sensuous perception of Him. ' We speak, it is true, of grounds or reasons for belief, but language of this sort is inappropriate ; for if I have grounds, and in fact objective, proper grounds, then the existence of the object is for me proved. The grounds themselves, however, may be of a subjective kind, and in this case I simply let my knowledge pass as proved knowledge, and in so far as these grounds are subjective, I speak of faith:^/ The first, the simplest, and as yet most abstract form of this subjective method of proof is this, that in the being of the Ego, the being of the object, too, is con- tained. This proof and this mode: of the object's ap- pearance is given as the first and , immediate form, in PeelinfT. I. The Form of Feeling. In regard to this, we find, to begin with, that the following conclusions hold good. THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION 119 a. We have knowledge of God, and, in. fact, imme- diate knowledge. We are not to seek to comprehend God, it is saidj we are not to argue about God, because rational knowledge has proved of no use here. h. We must ask for a support for this knowledge. We have this knowledge only in ourselves, thus it is only subjective knowledge, and therefore a foundation is asked for. Where, it is asked, is the place in which divine Being is, and in reply to this,'it is said, "God is in reeling." Thus feeling gets the position of a basis or causal ground in which the Being -oi God is given. These propositions are quite correct, and are not to be denied, but they are so trivial that it is not worth while to speak of them here. If the science of religion be limited to these statements, it is not worth having, and it is not possible to understand why theology exists at all. a. We have immediate knowledge of the fact that God is. This proposition has, in the first instance, a quite simple and ingenuous meaning ; afterwards, how- ever, it gets a meaning which is not ingenuous or with- out a suggestion of bias, namely this, that this so-called immediate knowledge is the only knowledge of God ; and in taking up this position modern theology is in so far opposed to revealed religion, and likewise to rational knowledge, for it, too, denies this praposition. The element of truth in this must be considered more closely. We know that God is, and this we know immediately. What does " to know " ^ mean ? It is different from cognition or philosophical apprehension.^ We have the expression '^ certain '' (gewiss), and we are accustomed to oppose certainty to truth. The term " to know"^ expresses the subjective manner in which a thing exists for me in my consciousness, so that it has the character of somethincr existent. o Knowledge,^ therefore, essentially means this, that the 1 Wissen.. , " Erkennen. 120 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION object, the Other, is or exists, and that its existence is linked with my existence. I may also know what it is, either by immediate sense-perception, or as the result of reflection ; but when I say " I know it," I know only its being or bare existence. This existence is not, it is true, empty existence ;. I have a knowledge also of more definite characteristics, qualities of the object, but of these, too, I know only that they are. Knowing is also used in the sense of having an idea, but it is always implied that the content is or exists. Such knowledge thus implies an abstract attitude and an immediate relation; whereas the expression "Truth" suggests a severance between certainty and objectivity, and the mediation of the two. On the other hand, we speak of " Cognition " or philosophical knowledge, when we have knowledge of a Universal, and. at the same time com- prehend it in its special definite character, and as a connected whole in itself. We comprehend or cognise Nature, Spirit, but not a particular house or a particular individual. The former are Universals,. the latter are particulars, and we com- prehend or cognise the rich content of those Universals in their necessary relation to one another. Considered more closely, this knowledge is conscious- ness, but purely abstract consciousness, that is to say, abstract activity of the Ego ; while consciousness proper contains fuller determinations of content, and distin- guishes these from itself, as object. This knowledge therefore merely means that such and such a content is or exists, and consequently it is the abstract relation of the Ego to the object, whatever the content is ; or to put it otherwise, immediate knowledge is! nothing but thought taken in a quite abstract sense. Thought, however, too, means the self-identical, activity of the Ego, and there- fore, taken generally, is immediate knowledge. To speak more precisely, thought is that in which its object has also the character of something abstract, the THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION 121 activity of the Universal. This thought is contained iu everything, however concrete the relation in any parti- cular case may be ; but it is only called thought in so far as the content has the character of something abstract, of a Universal. Knowledge is here accordingly i^ immediate know- ledge of a corporeal object, but knowledge of God ; God is the absolutely universal Object ; He is not any kind of particularity, He is the most universal Personality. Immediate knowledge of God is immediate knowledge of an object which is absolutely universal, so that the product only is immediate. Immediate knowledge of God is therefore a thinking of God, ior Thought is the activity for w^hich the Universal is. God has here no other content, no further meaning ; He is merely nothing that belongs to the sphere of sense ; He is a Universal of which we know only that it does not come within the sphere of immediate sense-perception. It is, in fact, as a movement of mediation that thought first attains its complete- state, for it begins from what is " other than itself," permeates it, and in this movement changes it into what is' Universal. But, here thought has the merely Universal for its object, as the unde- termined or indeterminate Universal ; that, is, has a quality, a content, which it itself is, in which it is, in fact, in immediate or abstract contact with itself. It is the light which illumines, but has no other content than just, light. It is just such an immediateness as is im- plied when I ask what feels feeling ? what perceives perception ? and am merely answered, leeling has feeling, perception perceives. In view of this tautology, the relation is an immediate one.. Thus knowledge of God means nothing more than this, I think God. V' But now it is to be added further that this content of thought, this product, i^, it is something -existent. God is not only thought by us, but lie is; He is not merely a determination of tlie Universal. We 122 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION must proceed to ascertain by examining into the Notion (Begriff) itself, how far the Universal receives the de- termination or attribute of Being or existence. " We must turn to logic for a definition of Being. Being is Universality taken in its empty and most abstract sense ; it is pure relation to self, "without further reaction either in an outward or an inward direction. Being is Universality as abstract Universality. The Universal is essentially identity with itself ; Being is this too, it is simple. The determination of the Universal, it is true, directly involves the relation to particulars ; this par- ticularity may be conceived of as outside the Universal, or, more truly, as inside it ; for the Universal is also this relation to itself, this permeation of the Particular. Being, however, discards all relation, every determination which is concrete ; it is without further reflection, with- out relation to what is other than itself. It is in this way that Being is contained in the Universal ; and when I say " the Universal is,'* I merely express its dry, pure, abstract relation to itself, this barren immediateness which Being is. The Universal is no Immediate in this sense ; it must also be a Particular ; the Universal must come to be in the Particular itself; this brin^infT of itself to the Particular does not represents what is abstract and immediate. By the term " Being," on the contrary, we express the abstract Immediate, this barren relation to ■self. V^Thus when I say "This object is," I express the utmost extreme of arid abstraction; it is the , emptiest, most sterile determination possible. - To know is to think, and this is the Universal, and has in itself the characteristic of tbe abstract Universal, the immediateness of being :. this is the meaning of im- mediate knowledge. We are thus in the region of abstract logic ; it always happens so when we think we are on concrete ground, the ground of immediate consciousness. But this latter ifi the very poorest possible soil for thoughts, and those. THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION 123 contained in it are of the very baldest and emptiest kind. It is a proof of the grossest ignorance to believe that im- mediate knowledge is outside the region of thought. We fight "with such distinctions, and when they are considered more closely they simply vanish. Even according to the very poorest definition of " immediate knowledge,'* namely, that given above, religion belongs to the sphere of thought. We, accordingly, go on to inquire m"ore precisely where- in it is that what I know in immediate consciousness is different from other things that I know. I know as yet nothing but that the Universal is ; what further content God has is to be discussed in the sequel. The standpoint -of immediate consciousness gives nothing more than the form of Being referred to. That man cannot know what God is, is the standpoint of " enlightenment," and this coincides with that of the immediate knowledge of God. But further, God is an Object of my consciousness, I distin- guish Him from myself. He is something different from me, and I from Him. If we compare other objects in accord- ance with what we know of them, we find we know of them this too, tliat they are, and are something other than ourselves, they exist for themselves, an.d further they are either universal or they are not, they are something universal and at the same time something particular ; they have some sort of definite content. The wall is ; it is a thing. Thing is a Universal, and thus much I know too of God, We know far more of other things, but if we abstract from all their definite characteristics, we only say, as we said just now of the wall, " It is,'' thus we know just as much of it as we do of God. And thus God has been called an abstract Utis. But |his ens is the very emptiest form of existence compared with which other entia show themselves to have a far fuller existence. We have said that God is in immediate knowledge ; we are too ; this immediateness of Being belongs to the Ego too. All other concrete, empirical things are or exist also, they are identical with themselves, this is 124 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION abstractly their Being as Being. TMs Being exists in common with me, but the object of my knowledge is so constituted that I can also withdraw its Being from it ; I represent it to myself, believe in it, but this in which I believe is a Being in my consciousness only. Conse- quently, universality and this quality of immediateness fall asunder, and must of necessity do so. This reflec- tion must necessarily occur to one, for we are. two, and must be separate ; otherwise we would be one ; that is, a characteristic must be attributed to the one which does not belong to the other. Such a characteristic is Being ; ** I am ; " the Other, the object, therefore is not. I take Being to myself, to my side ; I do not doubt my own existence, and on that account it drops away in the case of the Other. Since the Being here is only the Being of tlie object in such a way that the object is only this definitely known Being, there is wanting to it essential Being, Being in and for itself, and it receives this only in consciousness. It is merely known as known Being, not as having Being in and for itself., The Ego only exists, not the object.\ I may indeed doubt everything, but my own existence I cannot doubt, for " I " is that which doubts, " I " is the doubt itself. If the doubt becomes the object of doubt, the doubter doubts of doubt itself, and thus the doubt vanishes. /"I" is immediate relation to oneself ;; Being is in the " I." Immediate- ness thus gets a fixed place over against Universality, and is seen to belong to my side. In- the " I," Being is simply in myself; I can abstract from everything, but I cannot abstract from thought, for the abstracting is itself thought, it is the activity of the Universal, simple refer- ence to self. Being is exemplified in the very act of abstraction. I can indeed destroy myself, but that is the liberty to abstract- from my existence. " I am," — in the "I" tlie "am" is already included. ll^ow, in the act of exhibiting the Object — God — as He who is Being, we have taken Being to ourselves, the THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION 125 "I " has vindicated Being for itself, Eeing has dropped away from the object. II the object is notwithstanding to be spoken of as possessed of Being, a reason or ground must be given for this. It must be : shown that God is in my Being, and thus — since we are now in the region of experience and observation — ^the demand sounds as if we were asked to point to the state or condition in which God is in me, in which we are not two ; something observable, where the separateness drops away, where God is in this Being which remains to me in virtue of the fact that I am ; a place in which the Universal is in me as possessed of Being, and not separated from me. This place is Feeling. h. Eeligious feeling is commonly .spoken of as that element in which faith in God is given to us, and as that inmost region in which it is for us absolutely certain that God is. Of certainty we have already spoken. This certainty means that two different kinds of Being are posited in reflection as One Being. Being is abstract relation to self ; there are, however, two things possessed of Being, but they are only one Being, and this undivided Being is my Being ; this is certainty. This certainty, with a content in a more concrete form, is feeliD£r, and this feeling is set forth as the ground of faith and of the knowledge of God. What is in our feeling, that we call knowledge, -and so, accordingly, God exists. In this way feeling is regarded as 'that which is the basis or causal ground. The form of knowledge is what is first, then come the distinctions, and with these enter the differences between the two, and the reflection that the Being is my Being, that it belongs to me. And here accordingly is the need that the object, too, should be in this Being which I assume as mine ; and this is Peeling. In this way we refer or appeal to feeling. " I feel something hard ; " when I thus speak, " I " is 126 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION the One, the Other is that "something;" there are two of them. The expression of the consciousness — what is common to the two — is the hardness. There is hardness in my feeling, and the object, too, is hard. This com- munity exists in feeling, the object touches me, and I am filled with its specific quality. When I say " I " and "object," the two still exist independently; it is only in feeling that the double Being vanishes. The specific character of the object becomes mine, and in- deed so much mine that at first reflection in reference to the object, entirely drops away ; in so far as the other remains independent, it is not felt, or tasted. I, how- ever, since I get a determinate character in feeling, take up an immediate attitude in it. In feeling I am this single empirical I, and the determinate character of my feeling belongs to this particular empirical self-consciousness. A distinction is thus implicitly contained in feeling. On the one side am I, the Universal,; the Subject; and this transparent, pure fluidity, this immediate :reflection into myself, becomes disturbed by an '' Other ; " but in this " Other " I keep myself entirely with myself, I preserve completely my self-centred existence. The ex- traneous quality becomes, so to speak, fluid in my universality, and that which is for nie an " Other," I make my own. When another quality has been put into what is lifeless, this particular thing has acquired another quality too. But I, as feeling, maintain myself in that "Other" which penetrates me, and continue to be, in the determinateness, I. The distinction in feeling is, in the first place, an inner one in the Ego itself ; it is the distinction between me in my pure fluidity, and me in my definite character. But this inner distinction, owing to the fact that reflection enters into it, is none the less also posited as such. I separate myself from my definite character of determinateness, place it as "Other" over against me, and subjectivity comes to exist on its own account merely in relation ta objectivity. THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION 127 ^^It is usual to say that feeling is something purely subjective ; but it is in reference to an object of percep- tion, or of which I form an idea, that I first become subjective by placing some "other" over against me. It would consequently appear that feeliog cannot be termed something subjective, since in it the distinction of sub- jectivity and objectivity has not as yet appeared. This division, however, namely, that I as subject exist in reference to objectivity, is in reality a relation and identity, which is at the same time distinguished from this distinction, and it is just here that Universality ■begins. "While I stand in relation to another, and in perception, or in forming ideas, distinguish the object from myself, I am the mutual reference of these two, myself and the other, and I am making a distinction in which an identity is posited, and. my attitude with regard to the object is that of a grasping over (iibergrei- fen) or bridging over of the difference. In feeling, as such, on the contrary, the Ego exists in this immediate simple unity, in a condition in which it is wholly filled with determinate character, and does not go beyond this character. Thus I am, as feeling, something entirely special or particular ; I am thoroughly immersed in determinateness, and am in the strict sense of the word subjective only, without objectivity and without univer- sality. '. V Kow, if feeling be the essential religious attitude, this attitude is identical with my empirical self. ^ Determi- nateness, representing the eternal thought of the Universal, and I as wholly empirical subjectivity, are in me com- prised and comprehended in feeling. I am the immediate reconciliation and resolution of the strife between the two. But just because I thus find myself determined on the one hand as a particular empirical subject, and am on the other raised into a wholly different region, and have the experience of passing to and fro from the one to the other, and have the- feeling of the relation of the two, do I 128 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION find myself determined as against myself, or as distin- guished from myself. That is to say, in this very feel- ing of mine I am driven by its content into contrast or opposition — in other words, to refleetion and to the distinc- tion of subject and object. This transition to reflection is not peculiar to religious feeling only, but to human feeling generally. For man is Spirit, consciousness, idea ; there is no feeling which does not contain in itself this transition {o reflection. In every other feeling, however, it is 'only the inner neces- sity and nature of the process which impels to reflection, namely, the necessity whereby the Ego distinguishes itself from its determinate state. Religious feeling, on the contrary, contains in its content, in its very deter- minateness, not only the necessity but the reality of the opposition itself, and consequently contains reflection. For the substance or content of the religious relation is just the thought of the Universal, which is itself, indeed, reflection, and therefore the other moment of my empiri- cal consciousness, and the relatioif of both. Therefore in religious feeling I am alienated -from myself, for the Universal, the Thought which has an absolute existence, is the negation of my particular empirical existence, which appears in regard to it as a ^nullity which has its truth in the Universal only. ^ The religious attitude is unity, but it involves the power of judgment or differ- entiation.^ /'In feeling the moment of empirical exist- ence, I feel the universal aspect, that of negation, as a determinateness which exists entirely outside of me; or, to put it otherwise, while I am in t-ljis last I feel myself estranged from myself in my empirical existence, I feel I am renouncing myself and negating my empirical con- sciousness. Now the subjectivity which is contained in religious feeling, being empirical and particular, exists in feeling in the shape of some particular interest, or in some 1 '^Iti-aftdesUrtheils.'' THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION 129 particular determinate form in fact. Eeligious feeling contains just this definite (twofold) character, that of em- pirical self-consciousness, and that of universal thought, and their relation and unity. It therefore hovers be- tween their opposition and their unity arid harmony, differ- ing in character with the attitude of individual subjectivity to the Universal, as it determines itself in accordance with the particular shape assumed by the interest in which I happen at the time to be absorbed. Accordingly the relation of the Universal and the empirical self-conscious- ness may be of a very varied kind. There may be the utmost tension and hostility of the extremes, or the most entire unity. When the condition is that of separation, in which the Universal is the Substantial in relation to which the empirical consciousness feels that it exists, and at the same time feels its essential nothingness, but desires still to cling to its positive existence and remain what it isj we have the feeling of fear. When we realise that our own inner existence and feeling are null, and when self-consciousness is at the same time on the side of the Universal and condemns that existence, we get the feeling of contrition, of sorrow on account of ourselves. The empirical existence of self-consciousness feels itself benefited or furthered, either as a whole, or in some one or other of its aspects. Feeling that it has hardly been thus benefited by its own self-activity, but owing to combination and a power „ lying outside of its own strength and wisdom, which is conceived of as the abso- lutely existing Universal, and to wMch that benefit is ascribed — it comes to have the feeling of gratitude, and so on. The higher unity of my self-consciousness gene- rally with the Universal, the certainty, assurance, and feeling of this identity, is love, blessedness. c. But if with this advance of feeling to reflection, and this distinguishing between the "I " and its deter- minate state, which thus appears as content and object, such a position be given to feeling that it becomes in its, VOL. I. ' I I30 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION very self the justification of the content and the evidence of its Being or truth, it is necessary to make the follow- ing remarks : — \ The matter of feeling may be of the most varied character. We have the feeling of justice, of injustice, of God, of colour, of hatred, of enmity, of joy, &c. The most contradictory elements are to be found in feeling ; the most debased, as well as the highest and noblest, have a place there. Experience proves that the matter of feeling has the most accidental character possible ; it may be the truest, or it may be the worst. God, when He is present in feeling, has no advantage over the very Avorst possible thing. // On the contrary, the king- liest flower springs from the same soil and side by side with the rankest weed. Because a content is found in feelino:, it does not mean that this content is in itself anything very fine. For it is not only what exists that comes into our feeling ; it is not only the real, the existent, but also the fictitious and the false. All that is good and all that is evil, all that is real and all that is not real, is found in our feeling ; the most contradictory things are there. All imaginable things are felt by me ; I can become enthusiastic about what is most unworthy. I have hope ; hope is a feeling ; in it, as in fear, we have to do with the future ; that is, in so many words, with what does not yet exist, with -what perhaps indeed will, perhaps never will, be- Likewise I can become enthusiastic about the past ; but also for such things as neither have been, nor will be. I can imagine myself to be a great and able, a noble-minded, most superior man, to be capable of sacrificing everything for j^^stice; for my opinion ; I can imagine myself to have been of great use, to have accomplished much; but the question is, whether it is true, whether as a matter of fact I act so nobly, and am in reality so excellent as I imagine myself to be, "Whether my feeling is of a true sort, whether it is good, depends upon its content. The mere fact that there is THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION 131 a content in feeling does not decide the matter, for the very worst elements are there too. In like manner the question as to the existence of the content does not depend upon whether or not it is in feeling, for things which have been imagined merely, which have never existed, and never will exist, are found there. Con- sequently, feeling is a form, or mould, for every possible kind of content, and this content receives no determina- tion therefrom which could affect its own independent existence, its being in-and-for self. Feeling is the form in which the content appears as perfectly accidental, for it may just as well be posited by bay caprice, or good pleasure, as by Nature. The content as it exists in feel- ing thus appears as not absolutely determined on its own account, as not posited through the Universal, through the Notion. Therefore it is in its very essence the par- ticular, the limited ; and it is a matter of indifference whether it be this particular content, since another con- tent may just as well be in my feeling. Thus when the Being of God is shown to be present in our feeling, it is just as accidental there as all else to which this Being may belong. This, then, we call Subjectivity, but in the worst sense. Personality, self-determination, the highest intensity of Spirit in itself is subjectivity too, but in a higher sense, in a freer form. Here, however, subjecti- vity means mere contingency or fortuitousness. ^ ^It frequently occurs that a man appeals to feeling when reasons fail. Such a man must be left to himself, for with the appeal to his own feeling the community between us is broken off. In the sphere of thought, on the contrary, of the Notion, we are in that of the Uni- versal, of rationality ; there we have the nature of the real object^ before us; we can comerto an understanding concerning it ; we submit ourselves to the object, and the object is that which we have in common. But if we pass over to feeling, we forsake this common ground ; we ^ Natur der Sache. 132 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION withdraw ourselves into the sphere of our contingency, and merely look at the object as it is there. In this sphere each man makes the object his own affair, some- thhig peculiar to himself; and thus if one person says you ought to have such feelings, another may reply, I simply have not those feelings ; as a matter of fact, I am not so constituted. For what is really in question in this demand is merely that contingent existence of mine, which takes this or the other form indifferently, 'x Purther, feeling is that which man has in common with the lower animals ; it is the animal, sensuous form. It follows, therefore, that when what belongs to the cate- gory of justice, of morality, of God, is exhibited to us in feeling, this is the worst possible way in which to draw attention to the existence of a content of such a kind. God exists essentially in Thought. The suspicion that K He exists through thought, and only in thought, must occur to us from the mere fact that man alone has reli- gion, not the beasts/V \ . All in man, whose true soil or element is thought, can be transplanted into the form of feeling. Justice, free- dom, morality, and so on have their roots in the higher destiny of mau, whereby he is not beast, but Spirit. All that beloDgs to the higher characteristics of humanity J can be transplanted into the form of feeling ; yet the feeling is only the form for this content, which itself belongs to a quite different region. Thus we have feel- ings of justice, freedom, morality; but it is no merit on the part of feeling that its content is true. The educated man may have a true feeling of justice, of God ; he does not, however, derive this from feeling, but he owes it to the education of thought ; it is only through thought that the content of the idea, and thus the feeling itself, is present. It is a fallacy to credit the true and the good to feeling// Yet not only may a true content exist in our feeling, it otiglit to exist, and must exist ; or, as it used to be put, THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION 133 we must have God in our heart. Heart is indeed more than feeling. This last is only momentary, accidental, transient ; but when I say " I have God in my heart," the feeling is here expressly represented as the con- tinuous,' permanent manner of my existence. The heart is what I am ; not merely what I am at this moment, but what I am in general ; it is my character. The form of feeling as something universal thus means the principles or settled habits of my existence, the fixed manner of my way of acting. In the Bible, however, evil, as such,, is expressly attri- buted to the heart, and the heart — this natural particu- larity of ours — is, as a matter of fact, the seat of evil. But goodness, morality, do not consist in the fact that a man enforces the claims of his particularity, his selfish- ness, or selfness. If he does so, he is evil.\vThe element of self is the evil element which we generally call the heart. Now when it is said, as above, that God, justice, &c., must exist in my feeling, in my heart, what is meant is only that these are not to be merely something of which I form ideas, but are to be inseparably identical .with me, I, as actual, as this definite individual, am to be so determined completely and entirely ; this definite nature is to be my character, is to constitute the whole .manner of my actual existence, and thus it is essential that every true content should be in feeling, in the heart. Such is the manner in which religion is to be brought into the heart, and it is here that the necessity for the -religious education of the individual comes in. The heart, feeling, must be purified, educated ; and this edu- cation means that another, a higher mode of feeling is the true one, and comes into existence with the indi- vidual. Yet the content is not true, not self-existent, good, inherently excellent, simply because it is in feeling. If what is in feeling be true, then all must be true ; as, for example, Apis-worship. I'eeling is the central point of subjective, accidental Being. wTo give his feelings a 134 XHE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION / true content, is therefore tlie concern of the individual ; ' but a theology which only describes feelings does not get beyond the empirical, the historical, and such contingent particulars^ and has not yet to do with thoughts that have a content. The ideas and knowledge of an educated man do not exclude feeling and emotion. On the contrary, feeling nourishes itself, and gives itself permanence by means of ideas, and by means of ideas renews and kindles itself afresh. Anger, resentment, hatred, show just as much activity in keeping themselves alive by representing to themselves the various aspects of tbe injustice sustained, and the various aspects in which they view the enemy, as do love, goodwill, joy, in giving themselves fresh life by figuring to themselves the equally manifold relations of their objects, \ If we do not think, as it is called, of the object of hatred, anger, or of love, the feeling and the inclination become extinct. If the object fades out of the mind, the feeling vanishes too, and every external cause stirs up sorrow and love afresh.,^ To divert the mind, to present other objects to it to exercise itself upon, and to transplant it into other situations and cir- cumstances in which those various relations are not present to the mind, is one of the means of weakening sensation and feeling. The mind riiust forget the object ; and in hatred to forget is more than to forgive, just as in love to forget is more than to be unfaithful, and to be forgotten is worse than to he only disregarded. Man, as Spirit, since he is not merely animal, in feeling essen- tially exercises knowledge ; he is consciousness, and he only has knowledge of himself when he withdraws him- self oat of immediate identity with the particular state of the moment. Therefore if religion is only to exist as feeling, it dies away into something void of ideas, and equally void of action, and loses all definite content. \^ In fact, it is so far from being the case that in feeling alone we can truly find God, that if we are to finA this THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION 135 content there, we must already Icaoiv it from some other source* And if it be affirmed that we do not truly know God, that we can know nothing of Him, how then can we say that He is in feeling ? We must first have looked around us in consciousness in search of characteristics belonging to the content which is distinct from tlie Ego, and not till then shall we be in a position to point to feeling as religious, that is, in so far as we rediscover those characteristics of the content in it. In more recent times it has been ^customary to speak of conviction, and not of the heart, the " heart" being the expression still used for any one's immediate character. When, however, we speak of acting according to convic- tioUj it is implied that the content, is a power which governs me 5 it is my power, and I belong to it ; but this power rules me from within in a fashion which implies that it is already mediated by thought and intellectual insight. In regard further to what has special reference to the idea that the heart is the germ of this content, it may be freely conceded that the idea is correct, but this does not carry us far. That the heart is the source, means nearly this' — that it is the first mode in which any such content appears in the subject ; it is its first place, or seat. A man begins by having religious feeling or wanting it ; in the former case the heart is undoubtedly the germ ; but as a vegetable seed-corn represents the undeveloped mode of the plant's existence, so feeling, too, is this hidden or undeveloped mode. That seed-corn, with which the life of the plant begins, is only in appearance, in an empirical fashion, what is first ; for the seed-corn is likewise a product, a result, is what is last. It is the result of the fully developed life of the tree, and incloses this perfect ^development of the nature of the tree in itself. The pri&iariness is therefore only of a relative character. In a similar way in our subjective actuality, this entire content exists in an 136 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION undeveloped form in feeling; but it 4s quite another thing to say that this content as such belongs to feeling as such. Such a content as God, is a content which is self- existent and universal ; and in like manner the content of right and duty is a characteristic of rational "will. I am will, I am not desire only; I have not only in- clination; — "I" is the Universal. As will, however, I am in my freedom, in my Universality itself, in the Universality of my self-determination ; and if my will be rational, then its determining is in fact an universal one, a determining in accordance with the pure Notion. The rational will is very different from the contingent will, from willing according to accidental impulses or inclina- tions. The rational will determines itself in accordance with its notion or conception ; and the notion, the sub- stance of the will, is pure freedom. And all determina- tions of the will which are rational are developments of freedom, and the developments which result from the determinations are duties. This is the content which belongs to rationality ; it is determination by means of, in accordance with, the pure Notion, and therefore belongs in like manner to thought. V Will is only rational in so far as it involves thought. The popular idea that will and intelligence represent two different provinces, and that will can be rational, and so moral, without thought, must therefore be relinquished x;; As regards God it has already been observed that this content in like manner belongs to thought, that the region in which this content is apprehended as well as produced is thought. Now, though we have designated feeling as the sphere in which the Being of God is to be immediately exhibited, we have not in that region found the Being, the Object — God — in the form in which we sought for it ; that is to say, we have not found it there as free, independent Being, Being in and for self. God is, He is independent and self-existent, is free; we do not find this independence, THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION 137 this free BeiDg, in feeling; nor do we find the content as a self-existent content ; on the contrary, any kind of particular content may be in feeling. \ If feeling is to be of a truthful, genuine cliaracter, it must be so by means of its content ; but it is not feeling which, as such, renders its content true.- Such is the nature of this sphere of feeling, and such 'are the characteristics which pertain to it. It is feeling of any kind of content, and simultaneously feeling of self, \V In feeling we thus as it were have the enjoyment ..of our own selves, of oicr realisation of the object. The reason why feeling is so popular, is just because in it a man is in presence of his particularity or particular exist- ence. ^ He who lives in the object or actual fact itself, in science, in the practical, forgets himself in it ; it involves no feeling so far as feeling is recollection of his individual self, and in that forgetting of himself he is as regards his particular existence a minimum. Vanity, self-satisfaction, on the other hand, which likes nothing better than self, and the possession of self, and only desires to remain in the enjoyment of self, appeals to personal feeling, and therefore does not arrive at objec- tive thinking and acting. \A man who has to do with feeling only is not as yet complete ; he is a beginner in knowledge, in action, &c. We must now therefore look around us for another basis for God. In feeling, we have not found God either in accordance with His independent Being, or in accord- ance with His content. In immediate knowledge^ the Object was not possessed of Being ; on the contrary, its Being was found in the knowing subject, which discovered the basis of tliis Being in feeling. In regard to the determinate character of the Ego, which constitutes the content of feeling, we have already seen that it is not only distinct from the pure Ego, but must also be distinguished from feeling in its own pecu- liar movement in that the E^o finds itself determined as ^138 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION against itself. This distinction is now, too, to be posited as such, so that the activity of the Ego comes into operation, and sets its determinate character at a distance, so to speak, as not its own, places it outside of itself, and makes it objective. And further, we saw that the Ego is in feeling potentially estranged from itself, and has potentially in the Universality which it contains, the negation of its particular empirical existence. Now, in putting its determinateness outside of itself, the Ego estranges itself, does away, in fact^ with its immediacy, and has entered into the sphere of the Universal, At first, however, the determinateness of Spirit appears as the external object in general, and gets the entirely objective character of externality in space and time. And the consciousness which places it in this externality, and relates itself to it, is perception, which we here have to consider in its perfect form as Art- perception, 2. Perception. Art had its origin in the feeling of the absolute spiritual need that the Divine, the spiritual Idea, should exist as object for consciousness, and in the first place for percep- tion in its immediate form. The law and content of art is Truth as it appears in mind or Spirit, and is therefore spiritual truth, but spiritual truth in such a form that it is at the same time sensuous truth, existing for perception in its simple form. Thus the representation of truth is the work of man, but it appears fn an external fashion, so that it is produced under the conditions of sense. When the Idea appears immediately in Nature and in spiritual relations too, when the True shows itself in the midst of diversity and confusion, the Idea is not yet gathered into one centre of manifestation ; it still shows itself in the form of externality, or mutual exclusion. In immediate exist- ence the manifestation of the Notion does not yet appear in harmony with truth. That sensuous perception to THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION 139 which art gives occasion is, on the contrary, something which is necessarily the product of Spirit, not something which appears in an immediate or sensuous shape, and it has the Idea as its life-giving centre. In what may .be regarded as constituting the entire sphere of art, there may be other elements included than those which have just been alluded to. For truth has here a double meaning, and first of all that of accuracy, by which is meant, that the representation should be in conformity with the otherwise known object. In this sense art is formal, and is imitation of given objects, whatever the content may be. Here its law is not beauty. But in so far also as beauty is its law, art can be still taken as involving form, and have, moreover, a limited, well-defined content, as much as the literal truth itself. -But this last in its true sense is correspondence of the object with its conception or notion, namely, the Idea. And this, as the free expression of the notion unhindered in any way by contingency or caprice, is the self- existent content of art, and is a content indeed which has to do with the substantial universal elements, the essential qualities, and powers of nature and of Spirit. The artist, then, has to present truth, so that the reality, in which the conception or notion has power, and in which it rules, is at the same time something sensuous. The Idea exists consequently in a sensuous form, and in an individualised shape, which cannot miss having the con- tingent character attaching to what is sensuous. The work of art is conceived in the mind of the artist, and in his mind the union of the notion or conception and of reality has implicitly taken place. But when the artist has let his thoughts emerge into externality, and the work is completed, he soon retires from it. Thus the work of art is, so far as perception is con- cerned, in the first instance, an external object of a quite ordinary sort, which has no feeling of self, and does not know itself. The form, the subjectivity, which the artist HO THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION has given to his work, is external only ; it is not the absolute form of what knows itself, ^of self-consciousness. Subjectivity, in its complete form, is wanting to the work of art. This self-consciousness belongs to the subjective consciousness, to the perceiving Subject. In relation to the work of art, therefore, which in itself is not some- thing having knowledge, the element of self-consciousness is the Other, but an element, too, which belongs to it absolutely, and which knows the object represented, and represents it to itself as the substantial truth. The work of art, since it does not know itself, is essentially in- complete, and (since self-consciousness belongs to the Idea) it needs that completion which it acquires by the relation to it of what is self-conscious. It is in this con- sciousness that the process takes place by which the work of art ceases to be merely object, and by which self-con- sciousness posits that which seems to it as an Other, as identical with itself. This is the process which does. away with that externality in which truth appears in art, and which annuls these lifeless relatiouB of immediacy, and it is through it that the perceiving subject gives itself the conscious feeling of having in the object its oton essence. Since this characteristic, which is a going into itself out of externality, belongs to the subject, there exists a separation between the subject and the work of art ; the subject is able to contemplate the work in a wholly ex- ternal manner, to take it to pieces, or he can make smart, aesthetical, and learned remarks upon it ; but that process which is the essential one for perception, that necessary completion of the work of art, in turn does away with this prosaic separation. In the oriental idea of the substantiality of conscious- ness, its unity with the one Absolute Substance, this separation has not yet been reached, and therefore art- perception is not brought to a perfect state either, for this last presupposes the higher freedom of self-conscious- ness, which is able to place its truth and substantiality THE CONCEPTION OF RhuGION 141 freely over against itself. Bruce, wliea iu Abyssinia, showed a painted fish to a Turk, but the remark which the latter made was this ; " At the last day the fish will lay it to your charge that you gave it no soul." An oriental does not desire mere form ; ou the contrary, for him the soul remains absorbed in unity, and does not advance to the condition of separation, nor reach the process in which .truth stands on the one side as em- bodied without a soul, and on the other the perceiving self-consciousness, which again annuls this separation. If we now look back upon the progress which the religious attitude has made in its development up to this point, and\\i.f we compare perception with feeling, we shall see that truth has indeed definitely appeared in its objectivity ; but we see too that the defect, or deficiency, in its manifestation is, that it remains in sensuous, im- mediate independence, that is to say^ in that indepen- dence which in turn annuls itself,, does not exist on its own account, and which likewise proves itself to be the product of the subject, since it only attains to subjectivity and self-consci6usness in the perceiving subject. In per- ception the elements of the totality of the religious rela- tion — namely;, the object, and self-consciousness — have got separated . The religious process belongs, indeed, to the per- ceiving subject only, and yet it is not complete in the sub- ject, but needs the object perceived by sense. On the other hand, the object is the truth, and yetMt needs, in order to be true, the seH-consciousness which lies outside of it. ' The advance now necessary is this, that the totality of the religious relation should be actually posited as such, and as unity. Truth attaii^ to objectivity^ in which its content as existing on its own account is not merely something posited, but exists essentially in the form of subjectivity itself, and the entire process takes place in the element of self-conscious'ness. In accordance with this, the religious attitude is in the first place that of the general idea of ordinary thought. •14:: THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 3. Idea, or Ordinary "Thoioght} We can very easily distinguish between a picture (Bild) and an idea (Vorstellung). Something different is meant when we say "We have an idea," from what is meant when we say, "We have a picture of God ; " the same difference exists with regard to sensuous objects. A picture derives its content from the sphere of sense, and presents it in the im- mediate mode of its existence, in its singularity, and in the arbitrariness of its sensuous manifestation. But sinoe the infinite number of individual things, as they are present in immediate, definite existence; cannot, even by means of the most detailed or ample representation, be rendered as a whole, the picture is necessarily always something limited ; and in religious perception, which is able only to present its content as a picture, the Idea splits up into a multitude of forms, in which it limits itself and renders itself finite. Tlie universal Idea (Idee), which appears in the circle of these finite forms, and only in these, and which is merely their basis, must as such remain con- cealed. General idea or ordinary thought (Vorstellung), on the other hand, is the picture, lifted up^ into the form of Uni- versality, of thought, so that the one fundamental charac- teristic, which constitutes the essence of the object, is held fast, and is present before the mind which thus forms the idea. If, for instance, we say " world," in this single sound we have gathered together and united the entire wealth of this infinite universe. If the consciousness of ^ JN^OTE. — Throughout this section Vorstellung is generally translated as " idea," with a small i, and without the article to distinguish it from the Idea [die Idee) which represents, to use the deiinition of Professor Wallace, thought in its totality as an organisation or system of reason, but this rendering has not been strictly adhered to here or elsewhere, and general idea, ordinary thought, popular conception, and other ec^uivaleuts have been employed. — E. E. S. THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION 143 tlie object be reduced to this simple^ specific form of thought, it is then idea, which needs nothing but the word for its manifestation — this simple utterance or outward expression which remains within itself. The manifold content which idea simplifies may be derived from the inner life, from freedom, and then we have ideas of right, of morality, of wickedness. Or it may be derived from external phenomena, too, as, for instance, we may have ideas of battles, or of wares in general. Religion, when lifted up into the form of idea, directly involves a polemical element. The content is not grasped in sensuous perception, not in a pictorial and immediate manner, but mediately, after the fashion of Abstraction. What is sensuotis and pictorial is lifted up into the Universal, and with the elevation into tliis sphere there is necessarily linked a negative attitude towards what is pictorial. But this negative attitude does not merely concern the form (in which case the distinction between sense-perception and idea would lie in that only), but it also touches the content. The Idea (Idee) and the mode of presentation are so closely' related for sense- perception, that the two appear as One, and pictorial art implies that the Idea is essentially linked with it, and could not be severed from it. On the contrary, general idea (Vorstellung) proceeds on the supposition that the absolute, really true Idea cannot be grasped by means of a picture, and that the pictorial mode is a limitation of the content ; it therefore does away with that unity of perception, rejects the unity of the picture and its mean- ing, and brings this meaning into prominence for itself. Finally, then, religious idea or general conception, is to be understood as embodying truth, objective con- tent, and is thus meant to be antagonistic not only to the pictorial mode of representing truth, but also to otlier modes of subjectivity. Its content is that which has validity in and for itself, which remains substantially fixed as against individual suppositions and opinians, and 144 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION is inflexible as contrasted with the fluctuations of indi* vidual desires and likings. This has reference to the essence of idea in a general sense* With regard to its more specific form, we have to make the followinfr remarks: — o a. We have seen that in idea the essential content is posited in the form of thought, but this does not meati that it is already posited as thought. When, therefore, we said that idea takes up a polemical attitude to the sensuous and pictorial, and assumes a negative attitude with regard to it, this does not imply that idea has freed itself absolutely from the sensuous, and posited the latter ideally in a complete and perfect way. It is only in actual thought that this is accomplished, which lifts up the sensuous qualities of the content to the remon of universal thoufiht-determinations, to the inward moments, or to the determinateness as peculiar to the Idea itself. Since idea is not this concrete elevation of the sensuous to the Universal, its negative attitude towards the sensuous means nothing more than that it is not truly liberated from the sensuous. General idea or ordinary thought is still essentially entangled with the sensuous; it requires it, and Tequires to enter on this contest with the sensuous in order to exist. The sensuous element, therefore, belongs essentially to idea, although idea never permits the Isensuous to enjoy an independent validity. Further, the Universal, of which idea is conscious, is only the abstract Universality of its object^ only its undetermined Essence, or approximate nature. In order to give a determinate character to that essence, it again requires what is determined by Sense, the pictorial; but to this as being .^sensuous it gives the position of something which is separate from what is signified by it, and treats it as a point at which it is not permissible to remain, as something which only serves to represent the proper or true content which is separate from it. THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION 145 Oil this account, then, idea is in a state of constant unrest between immediate sensuous; perception on the one hand, and thought proper on the other. Its detet- minateness is of sensuous kind, derived from what is sensuous, but thought has introduce itself ; in other words, the Sensuous becomes elevated into thought by the process of abstraction. But these two, the Sensuous and the Universal, do not interpenetrate one another thoroughly ; thought has not as yet completely over- come the sensuous determinateness, and although the content of idea is also something universal, yet it is still encumbered with the determinateness of the Sensuous, and needs the form of the natural (Natlirlichkeit). But it is not the less true that this moment of the Sensuous does not possess independent validity. \\ Thus there are many forms in religion, regarding which we know that they are not to be taken in their strict sense. For instance, " Son," or " Begetting " is only a figure derived from a natural relation, regarding which we know quite well that it is not intended to be understood in its immediate sense, but that what is indicated is rather a relation which is only approximately the one here described, and that this sensuous relation has in it what corresponds most nearly to that relation which is taken in the strict sense in regard to God. And further, when we speak of the wrath of God, of His repentance, or His vengeance, we know at once that the words are not meant to be taken in the strict sense, but merely as implying resemblance, likeness. Then, too, we meet with figures worked out in detail. We hear, for instance, of a tree of knowledge of good and evil. With the eating of the fruit, it already begins to become doubtful whether what is said of this tree is to be taken strictly as a narrative as a historical truth — and so, too, of the eating — or whether this tree is not rather to be taken as a figure. When mention is made of a tree of know- ledge of good and evil, such opposite elements are involved' VOL. I. K 146 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION ill the conception that we very soon come to perceive that the fruit is no sensuous fruit, and that the tree is not to be taken in the strict sense. h. What is not merely to be taken as a figure, but rather in the sense of something historical as such, be- longs also, in respect to the sensuouB element in it, to the mode of the general idea. Somethiag may be stated in a historical way, but we do not take it .seriously as such, we do not ask if it is meant to be taken seriously. Such, for instance, is our attitude toward what Homer tells us of Jupiter and the other gods. But then besides this there is something historical which is a divine history, and of such a nature that it is regarded as in the strict sense a history, the history of Jesus Christ. This is not taken merely as a myth in a figurative way, but as somethipg perfectly historical. That accordingly is something which belongs to be sphere of general ideas, but it has another side as well. It has the Divine for its content, divine action, divine timeless events, a mode of working that is absolutely divine. And this is the inward, the true, the substantial element of this history, and it is just this that is the object of reason. In every narrative, in fact, there is this double element ; a myth, too, has a meaning in itself. There are, it is true, myths in which the external form in which they appear is of the most importance, but usually such a myth contains an allegory, like the myths of Plato. Every narrative in fact contains this external series of occurrences and actions, but these are occurrences it must be remembered in the life of. a man, a spirit. The history of a state is that of the mode of working, the actions, the fate of a universal spirit, the spirit of a people. Anything of this kind has already on its own account and in itself a universal element. Looking at the matter in a superficial sense, it may be said that it is possible to draw a moral out of every bit of history. THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION 147 The moral which is drawn from ifc contains at all events the essential moral forces which have been at work in it, which have produced it. These are its inner, its substantial element. The narrative thus presents the aspect of something which is broken up into detail, it possesses this detached or isolated characterj and is individualised to the utmost possible degree ; but uni- versal laws, moral forces are recognisable in it too. These do not exist for idea or ordinarj thought as such. What concerns idea or ordinary thought is the narrative as it historically develops itself in the phenomenal sphere. In an historical narrative of this kind, there is some- thing even for the man whose thoughts or conceptions have not as yet been definitely formed and cultivated. He feels these forces in it, and has a dim consciousness of them. Such is the essential form which religion takes for the ordinary consciousness, for consciousness in its ordinary state of cultivation. It is a content which at fi.rst presents itself in a sensuous manner, a succession of actions, of sensuous determinations, which follow each other in time, and are, further, side by side in space. The content is empirical, concrete, manifold, but it has also an inner element. There is spirit in it which acts upon spirit ; the subjective spirit bears witness to the Spirit which is in the content, at first through dim recognition without this Spirit being developed for consciousness. c. All spiritual content, all spiritual relation in general is finally idea when its inner characteristics come to be conceived of simply as self-related and independent. If we say, " God is all-wise, good, righteous," we have a definite content ; but each of these- determinations of the content is single and independent ; " and," " also," are the links which' belong to the general idea. "All- wise," " supremely good," are conceptions too : they are no longer imagery, do not belong to ^ense or history, but are spiritual determinations. They are not, however, as yet actually analysed; the distinctions are not yet 148 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION posited in their mutual relations, but are merely taken in an abstract simple self-reference. In so far certainly as the content already has manifold relations in itself, but a relation which is only external, there is posited thereby an external identity. When we say a thing is this, then that, and then so and so, these determinations have to begin with the form of contingency. Or if idea contain relations which are nearer to thought, as for instance, that God created the world, the relation is still grasped by idea in the form of contingency and externality. Thus, in the idea of the creation, God remains on the one side apart, and the world on the other, but the connection of the two sides : is not posited under the form of necessity. This connection is either expressed according to the analogies of natural life and natural events, or, if it be designated as creation, it is treated as a connection to be regarded as quite peculiar and incomprehensible. If, however, the word " Activity " be used as expressive of that which produced the world, it is indeed a more abstract term, but it is not as yet the notion. The essential content stands fast by itself in the form of simple universality, in which it lies concealed and undeveloped, and its transition by its own act into another, its identity with that other, has not yet been reached; it is merely identical with itself. The bond of necessity and the unity of their difference are wanting to the individual points. '^ As soon, therefore, as idea or ordinary thought attempts to conceive an essential connection^ it leaves the con- nection in the form of contingency, and does not go on to its true essence and to its eternal interpenetrative unity. Thus in idea the thought "of providence and the movements of history are embraced in and grounded on the eternal decree of God. But here the connection is at once transplanted into a sphere where it is said to be incomprehensible and inscrutable for us . The thought of the universal, therefore, does not become THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION 149 determined ia itself, and is no sooner expressed than ib is immediately cancelled. Having seen what is the general character of idea, or ordinary thought, it is now time to touch upon the pedagogic question of recent timeSj namely, whether religion can be taught. Teachers who do not know how to set about teaching religion, hold that instruction in the doctrines of religion is out of jllace. But religion has a content or substantial element, which must be capable of being placed before the mind in an objec- "tive manner. This involves the possibility of communi- cating the content so represented to the mind, for ideas are communicable by words. To warm the heart, to excite emotions, is something different. That is not to teach, that is to interest my subjectivity in something, and an eloquent sermon may produce the effect with- out containing doctrine or instruction. If, indeed, we make feeling our point of departure, if we posit it as that which is primary and original, and then say that religious ideas spring from feeling, that is, in one aspect of the matter, true, in so far as the original determinate- ness belongs to the nature of Spirit itself. But, on the other hand, feeling is so indeterminate that anything may be in it, and the knowledge of what lies in feeling does not belong to feeling itself, but is supplied only by the culture and instruction which ordinary thought com- municates. The instructors referred to do not wish that children and mankind generally should go beyond their subjective emotions of love, and they represent the love of God as being like that of parents to their children, who love them, and should love them just as they are : they pride themselves on abiding in the love of God, and while they tread all divine and human laws under foot, they think and say they have not injured love. But if love is to be pure, it must first renounce selfish- ness, it must have freed itself, and Spirit is only freed when it has come outside of itself and has once beheld the ISO THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Substantial as Another and a Higher over against itself. It is only when it has taken up a definite position toward the absolute power, toward the awe-inspiring Object, and thereby has come outside of itself in it, freed itself from itself and yielded itself up, that Spirit truly returns to itself. That is to say, the fear of God is the presupposition of true love. What the essentiaUy True is must reveal itself to the h-eart as an independent existencBj in relation to which it renounces itself^ and only through tliis mediation, through the restoration of itself, wins true freedom. V "When the objective truth exists for me, I have emptied myself of myself, I have kept nothing for myself, and have at the same time conceived of this truth as 77iine. I have identified myself with it, and have maintained myself in it, but as pure passionless self-consciousness. This relation — Faith — as the absolute identity of the content with myself, is the same thing as religious feel- ing, but with this difference, that it at the same time expresses that absolute objectivity which the content has for me. The Church and the Eeformers knew perfectly well what they meant by faith. They did not say that men are saved by feeling, by sensation (alaOtjai?), but by faithj so that in the absolute object I have freedom, which essentially includes the renunciation of my own will and pleasure, and of particular conviction. '' Now since, as compared with feeling, in which the content exists as a specific state of the subject, and con- sequently as contingent, idea implies that the content is lifted np into objectivity, it is in connection with the latter of these that the content should justify itself on its own account on the one hand, and on the other, that the necessity of its essential connection with self-con- sciousness should be explained. It is to be observed here, however, in reference to what primarily concerns the content itself, that the value which it has in idea is that of something given, of which THE CONCEPTION OE RELIGION i^r all that is known is that it is so ; then over against this abstract immediate objectivity, the connection of the content with self-consciousness appears, to begin with, as one which has still a purely subjective character. The content, it is then said, commends itself to me for its own sake, and the witness of the Spirit teaches me to recog- nise it as truth, as my essential determination. And, - undoubtedly, the infinite idea of the Incarnation for example — that speculative central point — has so great a power in it that it penetrates irresistibly into the heart which is not as yet darkened by reflection. But here my own connection with the content is not yet truly developed, and it appears only as something instinctive. The Ego, which turns itself in this manner to the content, does not require merely to be this simple and ingenuous Ego, it can be worked upon and inwardly moulded in various ways. Thus incipient reflection, which goes beyond adherence to what is given; ^ may already have perplexed me, and perplexity in this region is all the more dangerous and serious, that, owing to it, morality .and every other stay in myself and in life, in action and in the state, become unstable. The experience, accord- ingly, that I cannot help myself by means of reflection, that I cannot, in fact, take my stand upon myself at all, and the circumstance that I still crave after something that stands firm — all this forces me back from reflection and leads me to adhere to the content in the form in which it is given. Yet this return tp the content is not brought about by means of the form of inward necessity, and is only a result of despair, in that I know not where to turn, nor how to help myself in ;any other way than by taking that step. Or it may be that we reflect on the wonderful way in which religion has spread, and how millions have found comfort, satisfaction, and dignity in it. To cut oneself off from this authority is declared to be perilous, and the authority of private individual opinion is laid aside in its favour, ^ut here too a false 152 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION turn is taken, in that personal conviction is subjugated to general authority, and in relation to it is silenced. The consolation lies only in the supposition that the manner in "which millions have regarded the matter must probably be right, and the possibility remains*that, on being looked at once more, it may turn out to be otherwise. All these aspects of thought may be put into the form of evidences of the truth of religion, and they have had this form given to them by apologists. But this only introduces mere arsruinfr and reflection, a form of reasoninfr which does not take to do with the content of truth in its essential nature, which only brings forward credi- bilities or probabilities, and instead of contemplating the truth in its essential nature is only able to conceive of it in connection with other circumstances, occurrences, and conditions. ('And besides, although Apologetics, with its mere arguings, passes over into the region of thought and the drawing of conclusions, and seeks to bring forward grounds or reasons which are supposed to be different from authority, yet its principal ground is again a mere authority, namely, the divine one that God has revealed to man what he has to represent to himself in the form of an idea. Without this authority apologetics cannot stir for a single moment, and this perpetual mixing up and confusion of thought, or syllogistic reasoning and authority, is essential to the standpoint. - But since from this point of view it is inevitable that the arguing process should go on ad infinitum, that supreme divine authority is in turn seen to be one which itself stands in ueed of proof and rests upon an authority. Por we were not present, and did not see God when He gave the revelation. It is always others only who tell us of it, and assure us of the fact, and the very witness of these others, who lived through the history, or who at first. learned it from eye- witnesses, is, according to those apologists, to b^ the means of uniting our conviction with a content which is separated from us as to time and space. Yet even this THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION 153 mediation is not absolutely secure, for we are dependent here on the constitution of the mediuiu -which stands between us and the content, namely the perception of others. The power of perceiving the meaning of events demands prosaic understanding and its culture, and therefore conditions which were not present among those of olden times, for they lacked the capacity to grasp the history on its Jlnite side, and to draw out of it the inner meaning which it contains, since the antithesis of poetry and prose was not as yet defined with absolute distinct- ness. And if we place the divine in the historical, we continually get into the element of instalDility and want of fixed character which essentially belong to all that is historical. The prosaic understanding and unbelief took up a position of antagonism to the miracles of which the apostles tell us, and, regarding the matter from the objective side, there is the further objedtion of the want of proper proportion between miracle and the Divine. But even if all these ways of bringing about the connection of the content of idea or ordinary thought with self-consciousness for once attain their end, if the apologetic style of argument with its reasons has brought some to conviction, or if I with the needs, impulses, and sorrows of my heart have found comfort- and tranquillity in the content of religion, it is a mere accident that this has taken place. This result depends on the fact that this very standpoint of reflection and inner feeling has not as yet been disturbed and has not yet aroused in itself the presentiment of the existence of a Higher Being. It is therefore dependent on an accidental sense of defect. I, however, do not consist merely of this heart and feeling, or of this good-natured reflection which shows itself compliant to the apologetics of the understanding, and naively welcomes it and is only too glad when it perceives reasons which are adequate, and suitable to it, but I have other and higher needs besides. I am also concretely determined in an entirely simple and universal 154 THE PHILOSOPHY OF {RELIGION way, so that the determinateness in me is pure simple determinateness. That is to say/ 1 am the absolutely concrete Ego, thought determining itself in itself ; I exist as the Notion. This is another mode of my being con- crete ; here I do not only seek satisfaction for my heart, but the Notion seeks satisfaction, and it is as compared with the Notion that the religious content in the mode of idea or ordinary thought keeps the form of externality. Although many a great and richly endowed nature, and many a profound intelligence has iound satisfaction in religious truth, yet it is the Notion, this inherently con- crete thought, which is not as yet satisfied, and which asserts itself to begin with as the impulse of rational insight. If the as yet indefinite expression, " reason, rational insight," be not reduced merely to this, that something or other is certain for me as an external specific fact ; if, on the contrary, thought have so determined itself that the object stands firm to me on its own basis, and is founded in itself, then it is the Notion which as univer- sal thought differentiates itself in itself and in the differ- entiation remains identical with itself. Whatever further content in regard to the will or intelligence I may have in what is rational, the essential matter is always that such content should be known by m^e as founded in itself, that I have in it the consciousness of the Notion ; that is to say, not conviction -merely, certainty, and conformity with principles which are otherwise held to be true, and under which I subserve it, but thatun it I have the truth as truth, in the form of truth — in the form of the abso- lutely concrete, and of that which absolutely and perfectly harmonises with itself. And thus it is that idea melts iuto the form of thought, and it is this quality of form which philosophic know- ledge imparts to truth. From this it is clear that nothing is further from the aim of philosophy than to overthrow religion, and to maintain iorsooth that the content of religion cannot for itself be truth. On the contrary, it is THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION 155 just religion which is the true content, only in the fonii of idea or ordinary thought^ and it is philosophy which must first supply substantial truth, -nor has mankind had to wait for philosophy in order to receive the con- sciousness of truth. TIT. — Thk Nbcesstty and Mrdiation of the Religious Attitude in the Form of Thought. That inner connection and absolute necessity into which the content of idea is transplanted in thought is nothing else but the Notion in its freedom, in such a form that all content comes to be determination of the Notion, and is harmonised with or equalised with the Ego itself. The determinateness is here absolutely my own ; in itj Spirit has its own essential nature as object, and the given character, the authority and externality of the contentj vanish for me. Thought consequently gives to self-consciousness the absolute relation of freedom. Idea or ordinary concep- tion still keeps within the sphere of outward necessity, since all its moments, while bringing themselves into relation with each other, do this without in any way yielding up their independence. The relation of these elements in thought, on the contrary, is that of ideality, and this means that no element stands apart or is inde- pendent of the rest, but each rather appears as some- thing that is a show or semblance (Schein) in relation to the others. Thus every distinction, every definite element, is something transparent, not existing on its own account in a dark and impenetrable fashion. This implies that the objects distinguished are not independent, and do not offer resistance to each other, but are posited in their ideality. The relation or condition of the absence of freedom, both that of the content -and of the subject, has now vanished, because we have now absolute cor- jespondence of the content with the. form. The content 156 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION is iu itself free, and its inherent appearance is its absolute form ; and in the object the subject has before it the action of the Idea, of the Kotion which exists in and for itselfj which it itself is. In describing thought and its development, we have now to observe in the first place how it shows itself in relation to idea or ordinary conception, or rather as the inner dialectic of idea ; then, secondly, how as Eeflection it seeks to mediate tlie essential moments of the religious attitude ; and finally, how as speculative thought it com- pletes itself in the notion or conception of religion, and does away with Eeflection in the free necessity of the Idea. I . The Dialectic of Idea, a. What we have here to notice first of all is that thought dissolves this form of simplicity in which the content exists in idea. And that is the very charge which is so often brought against philosophy, when it is said that it does not leave the form ^ of idea or ordinary thought untouched, but that it altei-s it, or strips off it the content. ^ And then, since for the ordinary conscious- ness the truth is bound up with that form, it imagines that if the form be altered, it will lose the content and the essential reality, and it interprets that transformation as destruction. / If philosophy changes what is in the form of the ordinary idea into the form of the Kotion, we are undoubtedly met with the ■difficulty of how to separate in any content what is content as such, which is thought, from what belongs to the ordinary idea as such. But to break up the simplicity of idea or ordinary thought only means to begin with, to get the idea of distinct characteristics, as existing in this simple subject- matter, and to exhibit them in such a way that it is recognised as being something which is inherently mani- fold. This process is directly involved in the question : '' What is that? " Blue, for instance, is a sensuous idea. THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION 1^7 If it be asked, " What is blue ? " blue is perhaps pointed out in order that the perception of it may be acquired ; in the general idea, however, this perception is already included. What is sought after in this question, when seriously put, is rather the knowledge of the Notion ; it is to know blue as a relation of itself within itself, to know determinations in their distinctness and in their unity. Blue, according to Goethe's tlieory, is a unity of light and dark, and of such a kind ^that in it the dark element is the foundatiou, and what disturbs this dark- ness is somethinfT different, a liirht-j^ivinfr element, a medium by means of which we see this darkness. The sky is darkness, is obscure ; the atmosphere clear ; through this clear medium we see the blue. Thus God, as the content of idea, is still in the form of simplicity. Now, when we think this simple content, distinct characteristics or attributes have to be indicated, whose unity, so to speak, whose sum,- or, more accurately, whose identity, constitutes the object. Orientals say God has an infinite number of names, that is, of attributes ; to pronounce -exhaustively what He is would be impossible. If, however, we are to grasp the notion of God, He must have* distinct attributes, and these have to be reduced to a narrow circle, in order that by means of these and the unity of the attributes, the Object may be complete. h. A more definite category is the following. In so so far as a thing is thought of, it is posited in relation to an Other. Either the object is known in itself as the mutual relation of elements which are distinguished, or as the relation of itself to an Other which we know out- side of it. In idea, or ordinary conception, we always have qualities which are distinct, whether they belong to a whole or are arranged separately. In thought, howevei;, we become conscious of the contradiction of those elements which are at the same time supposed to constitute One. If they contradict each other, it does not seem as if "they could belong to what is 158 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION One* '^ If, for instance, God is kind and just too, the kindness contradicts the justice. In like manner, God is almighty and wise. He is therefore on the one hand the power before which everything vanishes— is not ; but this negation of all that has a definite existence is in contradiction with His wisdom. ' This last demands something which is 'definite, it has ah aim or purpose, it is the limitation of that indefinite element, which power is. " In idea, each element has its place, and all rest quietly side by side : man is free and also dependent ; there is good and there is evil, top, in the world. In thought the various elements are brought into mutual relation, and then the contradiction becomes apparent. There is someihing quite characteristic about the action of reflecting thought, when it appears as the abstract un- derstanding and takes to do with idea, when the latter ex- presses inner qualities and relations in a sensuous, natural, or, to speak generally, in an external shape. As the reflecting understanding, besides, always has pre-sup- positions of finitude, as it gives these absolute validity, and makes them the rule or standard, overthrowing the Idea and absolute truth if these are opposed to thenv so, too, it turns sensuous and natural specific forms, in which, after all, idea seeks to recognise the thought of the Universal, into quite definite finite relations, holds fast this finiteness, and then declares idea, or ordinary thought, to be in error. To a certain degree, it is still the dialectic of idea itself which is contained in this activity of the understanding, and hence the enormous importance of the A^t/Hdrung, which that action of under- standing was, for the clearing up of thought. To a certain extent, however, it is the case that "here the dialectic of idea is driven beyond its true compass, and transplanted into the territory of formal arbitrariness or caprice. Thus, for instance, in the popular conception or idea of original sin, the inner relation 6i thought is at the same time conceived of in the specific form of what is THB CONCEPTION OF RE^LIGION 159 natural ; but yet, by using the expression '' sin," it means to raise into the sphere of : the universal the "natural element Tvhich lies in the couceptiou of inherit- ance. The understanding, on the bontrary, conceives of the relation in finite fashion, abd thinks only of natural possessions or of hereditary disease. It is freely conceded that here, so far as the children are concerned, it is a matter of accident that parents should have pro- perty or should be tainted with disease ; children may inherit noble rank, property, or evil "^Vithout either merit or blame. li', then, we further reflect on the fact that the freedom of self-consciousness is superior to these condi- tions of chance, and that in the absolutely spiritual sphere of goodness each one has in tliat which he does his oivn deed, or, it may be, Ms oivn sin, it is easy to point out the con- tradiction involved if that which belongs absolutely to my freedom be supposed to have come upon me from else- where in a natural way, unconsciously and from the outside. It is much the same when understanding attacks the idea of the Trinity. In this idea, too, the inner thought- relation is conceived of in an external fashion, for number is thought in the abstract form of externality. But here understanding holds fast the externality onlifj keeps to numeration, and finds each of the Three externally com- plete in relation to the Others. Now, if this quality of number be made the foundation oi the relation, it is undoubtedly a complete contradiction that those who are perfectly external in relation to one- another should at the same time be One. c. Finally the category of necessity too comes in. In ordinary thought space exists, there is space. Philosophic thought desires to know the necessity of this. This necessity lies in the fact that in thought a content is not taken as being, as existing in simple determinateuess, in this simple relation to self merely, but essentially iu relation to an " Other," and as a relation of elements which are mutually distinct. i6o THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Wl at we call " necessary " is this, that if the one is, the other is thereby posited too, the first is only deter- mined in so far as the second exists, and conversely. For idea or ordinary thought the finite exists, the finite is. For philosophic thought, the finite immediately be- comes something which does not exist on its own account, but which requires for its existence something else, only is in fact through an Other. For thourrht in