Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/249

 lifted up into that essential unity, have special attention directed to them, and be engnged in with circumspection and sobriety, to the exclusion of all caprice. In this way solemnity and dignity rule in the most ordinary dealings of life. The concrete existence of finite life is not as yet esteemed a matter of indifference; it is not as yet degraded by freedom to externality, because the freedom of the inner life has not yet given itself an independent sphere. The acts of daily and ordinary life are, therefore, still regarded all through in relation to religion, and have the value of substantial acts. In order that this action, which is regarded by us as action of a contingent kind, may be congruent to the form of substantiality, it is essential that it be carried out with solemnity, repose, and becoming regularity and order. Consequently, all this is arranged in a general manner by means of rules, and that appearance of contingency is not present here, since in the process of becoming finite the subject has not cast itself loose from the Infinite, and given itself free play. An oriental who occupies this standpoint does not consider his body, nor finite occupations and the act of engaging in these as his own, but rather as being in the service of an Other, of the universal essential Will. For that reason he must engage in the most insignificant affairs with dignity and sober-mindedness, so that he may accomplish them in a becoming manner, in a manner suitable to that universal Will.

That solemnity is a mere form notwithstanding, and the content is limited to the range of the finite, and therefore the opposition is not truly done away with. Consequently, the orderliness with which the actions of everyday life are performed being only an external form belonging to that finite content, the actual distinction between external life and that which the absolute Object is for consciousness, is still present here. Subjective existence must therefore be definitely and openly annulled, and the mode in which this takes place here is connected