Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/15

 of the Universal manifests itself in a multitude of independent powers.

3. This multiplicity, this wild abandonment, is once more taken back into the original unity. This taking back, this concentration of thought, would complete the moment of spirituality so far as the Idea is concerned, if the original universal thought resolved within its own self upon differentiation, and if it were known as essentially this act of taking back. Upon the basis of abstract thought, however, the taking back itself remains a process devoid of Spirit. There is nothing wanting here, so far as the moments of the Idea of Spirit are concerned, the Idea of rationality is present in this advance. But yet those moments do not constitute Spirit; the unfolding does not give itself the perfect form of Spirit, because the determinations remain merely universal. There is merely a continual return to that Universality which is self-active, but which is held fast in the abstraction of self-determination. We have thus the abstract One and the wildness of extravagant imagination, which, it is true, is recognised in turn as remaining in identity with what is primary, but is not expanded into the concrete unity of the Spiritual. The unity of the intelligible realm reaches the condition of particular independent existence; this last does not, however, become absolutely free, but remains confined within universal Substance.

But just because the unfolding does not as yet return in a true way into the Notion, is not as yet taken back into the Notion by its own inner action, it still retains its immediacy in spite of that return, still belongs to natural religion, and therefore the moments fall apart, and are kept independent and separate relatively to one another. This is the curse of nature. Everywhere we shall find tones that accord with the Notion, with the True, which, however, become the more horrible in the strain as a whole because they continue to retain the