Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/13

 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

PART II

DEFINITE RELIGION

II

THE DIVISION OF CONSCIOUSNESS WITHIN ITSELF (continued)

2. The Religion of Imagination or Phantasy.

(a.) Its Conception.

The second of the main forms of Pantheism, when this latter actually appears as religion, is still within the sphere of this same principle of the One substantial Power, in which all that we see around us, and even the freedom of man itself, has merely a negative, accidental character. We saw that the substantial Power, in its first form, comes to be known as representing the multitude of esssential determinations, and the entire sphere of these, and not as being in its own self spiritual. And now the question immediately arises as to how this Power is itself determined, and what is its content? Self-consciousness in religion cannot, like the abstract thinking understanding, limit itself to the idea of that Power known only as an aggregate of determinations which merely are. In this way the Power is not as yet known as real, as independently existing unity; not as yet as a Principle. Now the opposite form of this