Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/183

 particularity and included within a spiritual unity. The truth of the Particular is the universal unity, which is concrete in itself in so far as it has the Particular within itself, and yet has this in itself in such a way that in its essence it is subjectivity.

The region for the play of this manifestation of reason, which, as subjectivity, is, so far as its content is concerned, universal, and is, so far as its form is concerned, free—the region in which pure subjectivity shows itself, is that of pure Thought. This pure subjectivity has been freed from the natural, and consequently from what is sensuous, whether this is found in the external world of sense or is a sensuous idea. It is the spiritual subjective unity, and it is this which first rightly gets from us the name God.

This subjective unity is not substance, but subjective unity; it is absolute Power, while the natural is merely something posited, ideal, and not independent. It does not manifest itself in any natural material, but in Thought. Thought is the mode of its definite existence or manifestation.

There is absolute power in the Hindu religion also, but the main point is that it be concretely determined within itself, and thus be the absolute wisdom. The rational characteristics of freedom, the moral characteristics, are united so as to form one characteristic, one End, and thus the characteristic of this subjectivity is holiness. Morality thus characterises itself as holiness.

The higher truth of the subjectivity of God is not the determination or characteristic of the Beautiful, in which the constituent element, the absolute content, is separated into particulars, but the characteristic of holiness; and the relation between these two determinations is similar to that between the animals and man: the animals have a particular character, but it is the character of universality which is the human moral rationality of freedom, and the unity of this, rationality, a unity which has an