Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/197

 or independence in themselves, and the Divine is only in the One. It might well seem to be a matter for regret that Nature should in any religion be undeified, and should get the character of what has no divine element in it. We are wont rather to extol the unity of the ideal and the real, the unity of Nature and God, and where natural things are considered to be freely determined as substantial and divine, it is the custom to call this the identity of ideality and reality. This is certainly the Idea, but such a determination of identity is so far very formal, it is cheaply got, and it is to be found everywhere. The main point is the further determination of this identity, and the true one is to be found only in what is spiritual, in God, who in a real way determines Himself, so that the moments of His Notion are at the same time themselves present as totality. Natural things, so far as their particular existence is concerned, have, as a matter of fact, an implicit existence; looked at through their Notion, their relation to Spirit, to the Notion, is an external one, and so too Spirit as finite, and appearing as this particular form of life, is itself external. Life, it is true, is essentially something inward, but the totality referred to, in so far as it is merely life, is external relatively to the absolute inwardness of Spirit; abstract self-consciousness is equally finite. Natural things, the sphere of finite things, purely abstract Being, represent something which in its nature is external to itself. It is here at this stage that things get the character of externality; they appear in accordance with their Notion in their true nature. If regret be felt that such a position is assigned to Nature, it must at the same time be granted that this beautiful union of Nature and God holds good for fancy only, not for reason. Even those who object so strongly to the undeifying of Nature, and extol that identity, will all the same certainly find it very difficult to believe in a Ganga, a cow, a monkey, a sea, &c., as God. It is here, on the contrary, that a