Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/257

 and thus the sovereignty of the Universal over the Particular is acknowledged. But what next follows is the application of this Universal to the Particular, and here the defectiveness of this conception becomes evident. Nations which are visited by calamity search after some transgression as its cause, and then fly for refuge to a Power which determines itself in accordance with ends. Even although the presence of this Universal be conceded here, its application to the Particular leads, on the other hand, to a disparity or false relation.

In the disturbed relations which we find at this first stage, unity appears as limited in character. It is capable of being rent asunder; it is not absolute, for it is an original and unreflected unity. Thus, over this presupposed, immediate, and consequently destructible harmony, and over the celebration and enjoyment of it, there still broods a Higher, a Supreme. For the original unity is mere natural unity, and in being such is limited for Spirit. Being encumbered with a natural element, it has not that reality which it ought in accordance with its notion to possess. This disunion must necessarily come to be present for consciousness, for consciousness is implicitly thinking Spirit. There must arise in consciousness the need of an absolute unity which hovers over that satisfying fruition, a unity which, however, remains abstract only, since that original harmony is the complete, concrete, and living foundation. Over this sphere there hovers a sense of division which is not resolved and harmonised, and thus through the gladness of that living unity there sounds a jarring and unresolved tone of mourning and of pain; a fate, an unknown power, a coercive necessity, unknown but recognised, without reconciliation, to which consciousness submits, but only by the negation of itself, broods over the heads of gods and men. This is an element which is bound up with the particular form of self-consciousness under consideration.