Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/132

 characteristic, and determined by the inner element as representing that which is free. We have here a natural material which implies that the features in it are simply tokens of the Spirit which is essentially free. The natural moment must, in fact, be overcome, that it may serve for the expression, the revelation of Spirit.

While the content in the Egyptian characteristic quality is this subjectivity, the impulse present here toward fine art is one which is worked out architecturally for the most part, and has at the same time endeavoured to pass over to beauty of form. Inasmuch, however, as it was only impulse, beauty itself as such has not as yet actually appeared here.

Such then is the source of this conflict between the signification and the material of the external form in general; it is only the attempt, the effort, to stamp the inward Spirit upon the outward embodiment. The pyramid is an independent crystal, in which a dead man dwells; in the work of art, which is pressing forward toward beauty, the inner soul is impressed upon the externality of the form employed.

What we have here is simply the impulse, because the signification and actual representation, the mental idea and the actual definite form of existence, are in fact opposed to one another in this difference, and this difference exists because subjectivity is, to begin with, merely universal, abstract, and is not yet concrete, filled up subjectivity.

The Egyptian religion thus actually exists for us in Egyptian works of art, since what these tell us is bound up with what is historical, and which has been preserved to us by ancient historians. In recent times especially, the ruins of the land of Egypt have been explored in a variety of ways, and the dumb language of the statues, as also of the mysterious hieroglyphics, has been studied.

If we must recognise the superiority of a people which has laid up its Spirit in works of language over one which has only left dumb works of art behind it for