Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/306

 means of this Universal, trained into harmony with this Universal; the natural will becomes transformed into a willing and acting in accordance with such universal points of view.

Man is therefore still undivided as regards his willing: here it is the passion and wildness of his will which holds sway. In the formation of his ideas, likewise, he is pent up in this undivided state, in this state of torpor and dulness.

This state is only the primal uncivilised reliance of Spirit upon itself: a certain fear, a consciousness of negation is indeed present here, but not as yet, however, the fear of the Lord, that of contingency, rather, of the powers of nature, which show themselves as mighty against him.

Fear of the powers of nature, of the sun, of thunderstorms, &c., is here not as yet fear which might be called religious fear, for this has its seat in freedom. The fear of God is a different fear from the fear of natural forces. It is said that “fear is the beginning of wisdom:” this fear cannot present itself in immediate religion. It first appears in man when he knows himself to be powerless in his particularity, when his particularity trembles within him, and when he has accomplished in himself this abstraction from that particularity in order to exist as free Spirit. When the natural element in man thus trembles, he raises himself above it, he renounces it, he has taken higher ground for himself, and passes over to thought, to knowledge. It is not, however, fear in this higher sense only that is not present here, but even the fear of the powers of nature, so far as it enters at all at this first stage of the religion of nature, changes round into its opposite, and becomes magic.

(a.) Magic.

The absolutely primary form of religion, to which we give the name of magic, consists in this, that the Spiritual