Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/302

 in it. In these branches of knowledge they had not, however, got nearly so far as the Greeks. The astronomical formulae are so needlessly involved that they are far behind the methods of the Greeks, and still further behind our own; and true science is precisely that which seeks to reduce its problems to the simplest elements. Those complicated formulae point, no doubt, to a praiseworthy diligence, to painstaking effort with regard to the problems in question, but more than that is not to be found in them: long-continued observations lead to such knowledge. So then this wisdom of the Indian peoples and the Egyptians has diminished in proportion as further acquaintance has been made with it, and it still continues to diminish day by day. The knowledge reached is either to be referred to other sources, or is in itself of very trifling import. Thus the whole idea of the paradisiacal beginning has now proved itself to be a poem of which the Notion is the foundation; only, this state of existence has been taken as an immediate one, instead of its being recognised that it appears for the first time as mediation.

We now proceed to the closer consideration of the religion of nature. Its specific character is in a general sense the unity of the Natural and Spiritual, in such wise that the objective side—God—is posited as something natural, and consciousness is limited to the determinateness of nature. This natural element is particular existence, not nature generally viewed as a whole, as an organic totality. Ideas such as these would already be universal ideas, which do not as yet actually appear at this first stage. Nature, as a whole, is posited as units or particulars; classes, species, belong to a further stage of reflection and of the mediation of thought. This particular natural object, this heaven, this sun, this animal, this man—these immediate natural forms of existence are known as God. The question as to what content is found in this idea of God may here be left undetermined to