Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/263

 wisdom, the wisdom of the world, and the question arises as to the relation in which it stands to that divine wisdom.

In a general sense, religion and the foundation of the State are one and the same; they are in their real essence identical. In the patriarchal condition, in the Jewish theocracy, the two are not as yet separated, and are still outwardly identical. But yet they are different, and in the further course of events they are sharply separated from one another, and then again are posited in true identity. From what has just been said, the reason of the existence of the essentially existing unity is already clear. Religion is the knowledge of the highest truth, and this truth more precisely defined is free Spirit. In religion man is free before God; in that he brings his will into conformity with the divine will, he is not in opposition to the supreme will, but possesses himself in it; he is free, since in worship he has attained to the annulling of the division. The State is only freedom in the world, in the sphere of actuality. Everything essentially depends here on the conception of freedom which a people bears in its own self-consciousness, for in the State the conception of freedom is realised, and to this realisation the consciousness of freedom which exists in its own right essentially belongs. Such nations as do not know that man is free in his own right, live in a condition of torpor, both as regards their form of government and their religion. There is but one conception of freedom in religion and the State. This one conception is man’s highest possession, and it is realised by man. A nation which has a false or bad conception of God, has also a bad State, bad government, bad laws.

The detailed consideration of this essential connection between the State and religion belongs properly to the Philosophy of History. It is only to be considered here in the definite form under which it appears to ordinary thought, and as it gets involved in contradictions in this form, and, finally, as it arrives at the opposition between