Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/128

 both of these represent modes which are inadequate to the Idea of God—so far, that is to say, as they are supposed to be the sole mode; for of course we are all aware that God has been outwardly visible to sense, though only as a transient moment. Art, too, is not the ultimate mode of our worship. But for the stage of that subjectivity which is not as yet spiritualised, which is thus itself as yet immediate, existence which is visible in an immediate way is both adequate and necessary. Here this is the entirety of the mode of manifestation of what God is for self-consciousness.

Thus art makes its appearance here, and this implies that God is apprehended as spiritual subjectivity. It is the nature of Spirit to produce itself, so that the mode of definite existence is one created by the subject, an estrangement or externalisation which is posited by the act of the subject itself. That the subject posits itself, manifests itself, determines itself, that the mode of determinate Being or existence in a definite form is one posited by Spirit, is implied when art is present.

Sensuous existence, in which God is visibly beheld, is commensurate with His Notion; it is not a sign, but expresses in every point that it is produced from within, that it corresponds with thought, with the inner Notion. But it has the defect of being still a sensuously visible mode,—that the mode in which the subject posits itself is sensuous. This defect is the consequence of its being as yet subjectivity in its first form, the primal free Spirit; its determination is its first determination, and thus its freedom is that of what is as yet natural, immediate, primal determination; that is to say, the moment of Nature, of sense.

The other point is that the work of art is produced by human beings. This, too, is inadequate to our Idea of God. That is to say, infinite, truly spiritual subjectivity, that which exists for itself as such, produces itself by its own act, posits itself as Other, namely, as its