Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/19

 which in this element of independent existence constitute the supports of the category for any content at all. A subjective soul is thus given to Matter, which, however, is not a category, but is concrete Spirituality and Life.

The immediate result is that as soon as objects generally and universal thought-determinations have this free independence, that connection of things in the world which is the work of understanding is dissolved;—it is the categories of the relations of necessity, or the dependence of things upon one another in accordance with their quality, their essential definite character, which form this connection; all these categories, however, are absent, and thus nature, with nothing to support or give it stability, reels at the mercy of imagination. There may be any sort of unregulated fancy, any kind of chance occurrence and result; the movement in connection with any condition of things is not bound and limited by anything whatever; the whole splendour of nature and of imagination is available as a means of decorating the content, and the caprice of imagination has absolutely unbounded scope, and can follow whatever direction it pleases.

Passion in its natural untrained state possesses but few interests, and that in which it has an interest it negates, while on the other hand it pays no attention to whatever is void of interest. From this standpoint of imagination, however, all distinctions are taken special notice of and firmly clung to, and everything which has an interest for imagination becomes free, independent, and is exalted to the rank of fundamental thought.

But it is likewise owing to this very imagined independence itself that conversely the peculiar position of the content and of the definite outward forms disappears; for since they have a definite finite content, they would properly have their objective support, their return and abiding renewal, only in that connection of the