Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/253

 purpose is the improvement and conversion of the person punished. To those occupying this standpoint, punishment cannot have any such moral, or rather religious, meaning. Civil laws and the laws of the State are here in fact identical with religious laws. The law of the State is the law of freedom; it presupposes personality, the dignity of man, and has essential reference to the Will, a sphere of discretion being left for the exercise of judgment regarding unimportant and indifferent matters. But for those who occupy the standpoint of which we are treating such a separation does not as yet exist, and the general condition is one of mere necessity.

From that finite form of existence and action which the religious worship just described brings into relation with what has essential being, there is further to be distinguished a more specific form of action which is in accordance with ends. The performance of such actions as have immediate reference to our necessities or requirements does not take place in accordance with an end, but is regulated in an immediate way. This action, on the other hand, which is in accordance with an end, is not mere action prompted by necessity or habit, but determines itself in accordance with ideas. Thus it still, it is true, is finite action, in so far as it has a finite end; but since the leading principle here is that the finite should be lifted up to the infinite, the finite ends too are to be extended into an infinite one. In this way religious work or labour makes its appearance, and this produces works of devotion which have not reference to a finite end, but which are meant to be something which exists for its own sake. This work is here itself worship. Such works and such productions are not to be regarded as corresponding with our ecclesiastical buildings, which are only undertaken because they are required. This labour, on the other hand, as pure production and as perennial work, is its own end, and is consequently never completed.

Now, this religious work is of diverse kinds and of