Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/118

 consequent on its being merely a conception formed by subjectivity, by subjectivity as resting on an abstract basis.

The depths of the universal antithesis are not in it as yet; subjectivity is not yet grasped in its absolute universality and spiritual nature. Thus it is superficial, external universality.

The content which is in idea or ordinary thought is not bound to time; it is posited in the region of Universality. The sensuous particularity which implies that a thing exists at a definite time or in definite space is stripped off. Everything, since it rests on a spiritual basis, owing to the presence of general ideas, has universality, although very little of the sensuous is stripped off—as, for example, in the idea of a house. The Universality is thus external Universality only, the possession of certain common features.

That external Universality is still the predominating principle here, is intimately connected with the fact that the foundation, this idea of Universality, is not as yet absolutely immersed in itself, is not as yet a filled up or concrete basis in itself, which absorbs everything, and by means of which natural things are posited ideally.

In so far as this subjectivity is the Essence, it is the universal basis, and the history which the subject is becomes known at once as movement, life, as the history of all things, of the immediate world. And so we have the distinction which is implied in the fact that this universal subjectivity is also the basis for the Natural. It is the inner Universal, that which is the Substance of the Natural.

We have, therefore, two elements here, the Natural element and the inner Substance, and in this we have what characterises symbolism. To natural Being a foundation other than itself is attributed; what is immediate and sensuous acquires another substance. It is no longer itself as immediate, but represents or means