Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/300

 its independent being from unity, and which has returned out of that state of separation to unity and reconciliation. Natural immediacy is therefore not the true form of religion, but it is rather its lowest and least true stage.

Ordinary thought sets up an Ideal, and it is necessary that it should do so. In so doing, it gives expression to what the True essentially is; but what is defective here is that it gives that ideal the character of something pertaining to the future and the past, thereby rendering it something which is not present, and so directly giving it the character of a finite element. The empirical consciousness is consciousness of the finite; what exists on its own account or in and for itself is the inner element. Reflection distinguishes the one from the other, and with justice; but what is defective here is that reflection takes up an abstract attitude, and yet at the same time requires that that which has essential existence should manifest itself and be present in the world of external contingency. Reason grants their sphere to chance, to arbitrariness, but knows that the True is still present even in this thoroughly confused world, as it appears to external observation and upon the surface. The ideal of a state is quite sound, only it is not realised. If we conceive realisation to mean that all things—the general conditions, the developments of justice, of politics, of practical needs—are to be commensurate with the Idea, we find that such a sphere is inadequate to the ideal, and yet the substantial Idea is nevertheless actual and present within it. It is not the confused state of existence alone which constitutes the Present, and this definite existence is not totality. That by means of which the ideal is determined may be present, but the actual presence of the Idea is not as yet recognised, because the Idea is contemplated with finite consciousness only. It is quite possible to recognise the substantial kernel of actuality through this outer rind, but for this severe labour is