Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/110

 is immanent in it. Then this determination, in so far as this negation appears as a natural state, enters as the determination of death, and the god appears here in the character of subjectivity in his eternal history, and shows himself to be the absolute Affirmative, which itself dies—the moment of negation. He becomes alienated from himself, loses himself, but through this loss of himself finds himself again, returns to himself.

In this religion, then, it is one and the same subject which passes through these different determinations. The negative, which we had in the form of the Evil One, Ahriman, implying that negation does not belong to the self of Ormazd, belongs here to the self of the god.

We have already had negation in the form of death too. In Hindu mythology there are many incarnations; Vishnu especially is the history of the world, and is now in the eleventh or twelfth incarnation. The Dalailama in like manner dies; Indra, too, the god of the natural sphere dies, and there are others who die and come back again.

But this dying is different from the negativity which is in question here, namely, death in so far as it pertains to the subject. As regards this difference, all depends on the logical determinations. In all religions analogies may be found, such ideas as those of God becoming man and of incarnations. The name Krishna has even been put side by side with that of Christ. Such comparisons, however, although the objects compared have something in common, some similar characteristic, are utterly superficial. The essential thing on which all depends is the fuller characterisation of the distinction, which last is overlooked.

Thus the thousandfold dying of Indra is of a different kind from that above referred to. The Substance remains one and the same; it forsakes merely the particular individual body of the one Lama, but has directly chosen for itself another. This dying, therefore, this negation,