Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/322

 they follow their ordinary course, and then he does not need to entreat them. But entreaty or supplication of this kind is a species of conjuring too; we use the word to conjure in the sense of entreaty. When a man entreats, he acknowledges that he is in the power of another. It is therefore often difficult to entreat or supplicate, because by that very act I acknowledge the control of the arbitrary will of another in reference to myself. But what is demanded here is that the effect, the entreaty, shall at the same time be the power exercised over the other. These two intermingle, the acknowledgment of the supremacy of the object, and, on the other hand, the consciousness of my own power, in accordance with which I desire to exercise supremacy over this object. Thus we see peoples sacrifice to a river if they wish to cross it, or bring offerings to the sun if it is eclipsed. They make use of the power in this way to conjure; the means are meant to exert a charm over the power of nature—they are meant to produce what the subject desires. The reverence thus shown towards such objects of nature is wholly ambiguous; it is not pure reverence, but reverence mixed with magic.

In conjunction with this reverence for natural objects, it may happen that these are conceived of in a more essential shape, as Genii; for example, the sun may be thought of as a genius, or we may have the genius of rivers, &c. This is a kind of reverence in which man does not stop short at the particularity of the object; on the contrary, it is universality which is before the mind, and it is this which is reverenced. But while this universality too is thus conceived of as in a universal shape and appears as power, man may, notwithstanding, preserve the consciousness of being the power even over these genii; their content is poorer, is only that of natural existences; it still continues a merely natural one, and self-consciousness is thus able to know itself as a power over it.