Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/281

 1. Natural Religion.—This is the unity of the spiritual and natural, and God is here conceived of in this aspect as yet natural unity. Man in his immediacy represents merely sensuous natural knowledge and natural volition. In so far as the moment of religion is contained in this, and the moment of elevation is still shut up within the natural state, there is something present which is to be regarded as higher than anything merely immediate. This is magic.

2. We have the division or dualism of consciousness within itself. This implies that consciousness knows itself to be something merely natural, and distinguishes from this the True, the Essential, in which this naturalness, this finiteness has no value, and is known to be a nullity. While in natural religion Spirit still lives in neutrality with nature, God is now defined as the absolute Power or Substance in which natural will—the subject—is something transient, accidental, selfless, and devoid of freedom. Here it is man’s highest dignity that he should know himself to be a nullity.

At first, however, elevation of spirit above the natural is not carried through in a consistent manner. On the contrary, there is still a frightful inconsistency here, as is shown in the way in which the different spiritual and natural powers are mixed up with one another. This intrinsically inconsistent elevation has an historical existence in the three Oriental religions of Substance.

3. But the entanglement of the natural and spiritual leads to the conflict of subjectivity, for the latter seeks to reinstate itself in its unity and universality, and this conflict again has had its historical existence in three religions, which constitute the religions of the transition to the stage of free subjectivity. Since, however, in these too, as well as in the previous stages, Spirit has not as yet completely subjected the natural element to itself, they constitute, together with the preceding ones, the sphere—