Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/278

 of religion, of what religion implicitly is. That is what it is for us, as we have seen it. For it to attain to consciousness is, however, quite another matter. Or, to put it in other words, as we considered the conception of religion, this was our thought, it existed in the medium of our thought, we thought the conception, and it had its reality in our thought. But religion is not merely this subjective element, but is essentially objective; it has a mode of existence of its own, and the first form of this existence is that of immediacy, where religion has not as yet itself advanced to thought, to reflection. This immediacy, however, by its own onward impulse moves toward mediation, because it is potentially thought, and in true religion it becomes for the first time known what it essentially is, what its notion or conception is. True or actual religion is adequate to its notion or conception. We now have to consider the course by which true religion takes its rise. In its notion or conception religion is no religion as yet, for it is essentially present as such in consciousness only. This is the meaning of what we are here considering, namely, the self-realisation of the Notion. The progress of the realisation has been already indicated in a general way: the Notion is, as it were, a capacity in Spirit; it constitutes its inmost truth; but Spirit must attain to the knowledge of this truth; not till then does true religion become real and actual. It may be said of all religions that they are religions, and correspond with the notion or conception of religion. At the same time, however, in being still limited, they do not correspond with the notion, and yet they must contain it, or else they would not be religions. But the notion or conception is present in them in different ways. At first they contain it implicitly only. These definite religions are but particular moments of the notion, and for that very reason they do not correspond with it, for it does not exist in an actual shape in them. In like manner, man certainly is implicitly free, but Africans and