Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/239

 spirit of that people. This spirit is in fact the substantial element, and as it were the identical element of nature; it is the absolute foundation of faith. It is the standard which determines what is to be regarded as truth. This substantial element exists in this way independently in contradistinction to individuals; it is their power in reference to them as units, and is in this relation to them their absolute authority. Each individual as belonging to the spirit of his people is born in the faith of his fathers, without his fault and without his desert, and the faith of his fathers is a sacred thing to the individual and is his authority. This constitutes that basis of faith afforded by historical development.

And here the question arises as to how a religion is founded, that is to say, in what manner the substantial Spirit comes into the consciousness of nations. This is something historical; the beginnings are invisible; those who are capable of expressing that Spirit are prophets, poets. Herodotus says, Homer and Hesiod made their gods for the Greeks. Homer and Hesiod have here an authority, but for this reason only, that their utterances were in conformity with the Greek spirit. And besides, the thoughts of these poets were preceded by still earlier beginnings, which were the first glimmerings of the Divine, for it will hardly be maintained that the stage of culture which appears in the works of Homer represents what has existed from the very first. Dread of the supersensuous expressed itself in the earliest times in a crude and primitive manner. Fear is the beginning, and in order to remove it and to render that supersensuous power propitious, recourse was had to incantations, and prayers were offered up in the form of hymns. Thus by degrees consciousness develops itself, and the few who in this state of things know what the Divine is are the Patriarchs, the Priests, or it may be that a caste or a particular family is marked off to teach doctrine and to conduct the worship of God. Each individual lives into