Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/120

 really is that inner element is Osiris, the subject, this cycle which returns into itself.

In this mode of representing the truth it is the symbol which is the dominant factor. We have an independent inner element which has an external mode of existence, and these two are distinct from one another. It is the inner element, the subject, which is free here, which has become independent, in order that that inner element may be the substance of what is external, and may not be in contradiction with it, may not be a dualism, but be the signification, the independently self-existing idea, in contrast to the sensuous mode of existence in which last it constitutes the central point.

The representation of subjectivity in this definite shape as the central point is closely connected with the impulse to give the idea visible form. The idea as such must express itself, and it is man who must bring this meaning out of himself and give it a visible form. The immediate has already vanished if it is supposed to appear under the conditions of sense-perception or in some particular mode of immediacy, and the general idea is under the necessity of giving itself completeness in this way. If the general idea thus integrates itself, this immediacy must be of a mediated character, a production of man.

Formerly we had visibility, immediacy in a natural unmediated mode, where Brahma has his existence, the mode of his immediacy in thought, in the immersion or sinking down of man into himself. Such was the case too where the Good is light, and therefore in the form of an immediacy which exists in an immediate mode.

Since here, however, the starting-point is ordinary thought or idea, this must give itself to a definite sensuous form, and must bring itself to immediacy. It is, however, a mediated immediacy, because it is an immediacy posited by man. It is the inner element which