Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/117

 To Osiris the other deities attach themselves; he is the uniting point, and they are only single moments of the totality which he represents. Thus Ammon is the moment of the Sun, which characteristic also pertains to Osiris. There are besides a great number of deities which have been called the deities of the calendar, because they have a relation to the natural revolutions of the year. Particular periods of the year, like the vernal equinox, the early summer, and the like, are brought into prominence and personified in the deities of the calendar.

Osiris, however, signifies what is spiritual, not only what is natural; he is a lawgiver, he instituted marriage, taught agriculture and the arts. In these popular conceptions are found historical allusions to ancient kings: Osiris consequently contains historical features too. In the same way the incarnations of Vishnu seem to point to the conquest of Ceylon in the history of India.

Just as the special characteristics represented by Mithras as being the most interesting were brought into prominence, and the religion of the Parsis became the worship of Mithras, so Osiris has become the central point here; not, however, in the immediate, but in the spiritual and intellectual world.

What has been said implies that subjectivity exists at first in the form of idea or ordinary thought here. We have to do with a subject, with a spiritual being conceived after a human fashion. This subject is not, however, a man in his immediate character, his existence not being posited in the immediacy of human thought, but in that of popular conception or ordinary thought.

It is a content which has moments, movement in itself, by means of which it is subjectivity, but is also in the form, on the plane of spirituality, exalted above the Natural. Thus the Idea (Idee) is posited in this region of general conception, but is marked by the deficiency