Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/126

 with external suitability to ends, but means either the months, or the feet that the Nile has to rise in order to overflow the land, or something of a similar kind. The Spirit of the Egyptian nation is, in fact, an enigma. In Greek works of art everything is clear, everything is evident; in Egyptian art a problem is everywhere presented; it is an external sign, by means of which something which has not been yet openly expressed is indicated.

Even if, however, at this standpoint Spirit is still in a state of fermentation, and still has the drawback of a want of clearness, and if even the essential moments of religious consciousness are in part mingled with one another, and partly in this intermingling, or rather on account of this intermingling, are in a state of mutual strife, yet it is still free subjectivity which here takes its rise, and thus it is precisely here that art too, more correctly speaking fine art, must of necessity make its appearance and is needful in religion. Art, it is true, is imitation, but not that alone; it may, notwithstanding, arrest itself at that, but it is then neither fine art nor does it represent a need belonging to religion. Only as fine art does it pertain to the Notion of God. True art is religious art, but art is not a necessity where God has still a natural form; for example, that of the sun or of a river. It is also not a necessity in so far as the reality and visibility of God are expressed in the outward shape of a man or of an animal, nor when the mode of manifestation is light. It begins, it is true, when, as in the case of Buddha, the actual human form has dropped away, but still exists in imagination; and thus it has a commencement where there is imaginative conception of the divine form, as, for example, in images of Buddha; in this case, however, the Divine is regarded as at the same time still present in the teachers, his followers. The human form in the aspect in which it is the appearance of subjectivity, is only then necessary