Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/333

 II.

THE DIVISION OF CONSCIOUSNESS WITHIN ITSELF.

The first step in advance is when consciousness of a substantial Power comes in, and of the powerlessness of the immediate will. Inasmuch as God is here known as the Absolute Power, this is not as yet the religion of freedom; for though man does actually rise, by the coming in of that consciousness, above himself, and though the essential differentiation of Spirit is carried into effect, still since this lofty Being is known as power, and is not as yet further characterised, the Particular is merely something accidental, is a mere negative or nullity. Everything subsists by means of this power, or, in other words, it is itself the subsistence of everything, so that the freedom of a self-dependent existence is not as yet recognised. This is Pantheism.

This power, which is something reached by thought, is not as yet known as such, as implicitly spiritual. Since it must now have a spiritual mode of existence, but has not as yet in itself freedom in its own right, it has the moment of spirituality again merely in a single human being, who is known as this power.

In the exaltation of spirit with which we have to do here, the point of departure is the finite, the contingent. This is defined as the negative, and the universal self-existent Essence as that in which and by means of which this finite is something negative, something posited. Substance, on the contrary, is the not-posited, the self-existent, the power in relation to the finite.

Now, the consciousness which rises up, rises up in its character as thought, but without having a consciousness regarding this universal thought, without expressing it in the form of thought. The rising up is, however, in the first place, an upward movement only. The other