Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/129

 coincide. The perfect form of consciousness is reached when it becomes conscious of the true object, and the object, what is substantial, Substance, reaches its perfect or completed stage when it exists for itself, that is, when it distinguishes itself from itself and has itself as object. Consciousness forces itself on to consciousness of the Substantial, and this latter, which is the notion of Spirit, forces itself on to phenomenal existence and to a relation in which it exists as self-conscious or for itself. This final stage, where the movement of both sides is brought into harmony, is the moral world, the State. Here the freedom of the Spirit, which proceeds on its way independent as the sun, exists as a present, realised object, as a necessity and a concretely existing world. Here consciousness likewise attains its perfect state, and each man finds himself provided in this world of the State with all he needs, and has his freedom in it. Consciousness, or being-for-self, and the essential being of Spirit have thus attained the self-same goal.

c. But this manifestation of the Divine Life is itself still in the region of finiteness, and the abrogation of this finiteness constitutes the religious standpoint, where God is Object of consciousness as absolute Power and Substance into which the whole wealth of the natural as of the spiritual world has returned. The religious point of view, as representing the unfolding of the natural and spiritual universe, shows itself in this progressive movement as the absolutely true and primary, which has nothing lying behind it as a permanent presupposition, but has absorbed everything into itself. The requirements of necessity indeed imply that this entire wealth of the natural and spiritual world should bury itself in its truth, namely, in the Universal which exists in and for itself. But this Universal, since it is essentially determined to particularity, and as concrete, as Idea, is essentially self-repulsion, develops particularity or determinateness out of itself, and posits itself for consciousness.