Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/184

 essential independent existence, is the true subjectivity, the subjectivity which determines itself within itself. This is wisdom and holiness. The content of the Greek gods, the moral Powers, are not holy, because they are particular and limited.

A.

THE GENERAL NATURE OF THE CONCEPTION.

The Absolute, God, is defined as the one subjectivity, pure subjectivity, and, as a consequence, as subjectivity which is universal in itself, or the reverse. This subjectivity, which is universal in itself, is clearly One only. The unity of God consists in this, that the consciousness of God is the consciousness of Him as One. The point here is not to show that the unity exists implicitly, that the unity lies at the basis of things, as is the case in the Indo-Chinese religion; for God is not posited as infinite subjectivity when His unity is merely implicit, and He is not known and does not exist for consciousness as subjectivity. God in the present case is, on the contrary, consciously known as a personal One, not as One, as in Pantheism. Thus the immediate natural mode of conceiving of God disappears, the mode, for instance, which appears in the Persian religion, in which He is thought of as light. Religion is conceived of as the religion of Spirit, but only so far as its basis is concerned, only as it exists in the region that specially belongs to it, that of Thought. This unity of God contains itself One Power, a Power which consequently is absolute, and within this all externality, and consequently all that belongs to the world of sense, that takes on the form of sense, or is a picture, disappears.

God is here without form. He does not exist in any external sensuous form. There is no image of Him. He does not exist for the sensuous idea, but, on the contrary, He exists only for thought. The infinite