Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/317

, and only by the annulling of his particularity does he create full satisfaction for himself in his Essence, unite himself with himself as Essence, and attain to himself by means of the negative mode of himself.

In mediation, as it at first exhibits itself to us in an external form, the mediation takes place, as it were, by means of an Other which remains external. In magic, as such, man exerts direct power over nature. Here he exercises an indirect power, by means of an object, of a charm.

The moments of mediation, looked at more closely, are these:—1. The immediate relation here is that the self-consciousness, as spiritual self-consciousness, knows itself as the power ruling over natural things. These themselves, again, are a power among themselves. This is already, therefore, a further reflection, and no longer an immediate relation, where the as a unit confronts natural things. The next form of universality reached by reflection is that natural things appear to be within one another, stand in connection with one another, that the one is to be known by means of the other, has its meaning as cause and effect, so that, in fact, they are essentially in a condition of relation. This connection is already a form of the objectifying of the Universal, for the thing is thus no longer a unit, it goes out beyond itself, it gives itself a valid existence in what is other than itself; the thing becomes broader in this way. In the first relation am the ideality of the thing, the power over it; now, however, when thus posited objectively, the things are themselves the power in their mutual relation to one another; the one is that which posits the other ideally. This is the sphere of indirect magic through means, while the magic first referred to was direct magic.

This is a form of objectifying which is merely a connection of external things, and means that the subject does not take to itself the direct power over nature, but only over the means. This mediated magic is present at all