Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/280

 In the active process of emerging from immediacy, we do not yet find the freedom which has been truly conquered, but only liberation, which is still entangled in that from which it frees itself.

What we have now to consider first is the form of natural, immediate religion. In this primal natural religion consciousness is still natural consciousness, the consciousness of sensuous desire. It is thus immediate. Here there does not as yet exist any division of consciousness within itself, for this division or dualism implies that consciousness distinguishes its sensuous nature from what belongs to its essential Being, so that the natural is known only as mediated through the Essential. It is here that it first becomes possible for religion to originate.

In connection with this rising up to the Essential we have to consider the conception of this exaltation in general. Here the object is defined in a positive way, and this true element from which consciousness distinguishes itself is God. This exaltation or rising up is exactly what appears in a more abstract form in the proofs of the existence of God. In all these proofs there is one and the same exaltation; it is only the point of departure and the nature of this Essence which are different. But this rising up to God, however it may be defined, is only the one side. The other is the reverse process. God, in whatever way He may be defined, brings Himself into relation with the subject which has thus lifted itself. Here then comes in the question as to the manner in which the subject is characterised or defined; it, however, knows that it itself is what God is determined to be.

The conscious turning of the subject toward this Essence has to be treated of likewise, and this introduces the aspect of Worship,—the close union of the subject with its Essence.

The division of the subject takes, therefore, the following form:—