Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/121

 is to be brought to immediacy: the Nile, the course of the year, are immediate existences, but they are symbols only of the inner element.

Their history, as natural, is gathered up and comprised within idea, this unification, this course appearing as one subject, and the subject itself is intrinsically the returning movement already spoken of. This cycle is the subject, which idea is, and which as the subject is to make itself perceptible by sense.

(c.) Worship or cultus.

The impulse just described may be regarded as representing in general the cultus of the Egyptians, this endless impulse to work, to describe or represent outwardly what is as yet only inward, contained in idea, and for this reason has not become clear to the mind. The Egyptians worked on for thousands of years. First of all they put their soil into order; but the work which has relation to religion is the most amazing that has ever been accomplished, whether upon the earth or under it. Think of the works of art still in existence, but in the form of parched and arid ruins, which, however, on account of their beauty and the toil which their construction represents, have been a source of astonishment to all the world.

It has been the task, the deed of this people to produce these works; there was no pause in this production; we see the spirit labouring ceaselessly to render its idea visible to itself, to bring into clearness, into consciousness, what it inwardly is. This restless industry of an entire people is directly based upon the definite character which the god has in this religion.

First of all we may recall how, in Osiris, spiritual moments too are revered, such as justice, morality, the institution of marriage, art, and so forth. Osiris is, however, in a special sense the lord of the realm of the dead, judge of the dead. A countless number of pictures or representations are to be found in which Osiris is