Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/198

 foundation is laid for a more rational way of looking at things and at their connection.

This, however, is not as yet the place at which to give to this form of conscious thought theoretic completeness and make it knowledge. In order to do this, there must exist a concrete interest for things, and the Essence must be conceived of not merely as universal, but also as determinate Notion. The definite theoretic view of things cannot exist alongside of the popular idea of abstract wisdom and of one limited end.

The relation of God to the world in general is thus defined as His immediate manifestation in it in a particular, individual way, for a definite end in a limited sphere, and it is at this point that the definite conception of miracles comes in. In the earlier religions there are no miracles; in the religion of India everything has been in a deranged state from the very start. The idea of miracle comes in first in connection with the thought of opposition to the order of Nature, to the laws of Nature even when these have not as yet been discovered, but when there is only the consciousness of a natural connection between things of a general character. It is here we first meet with the miraculous, and the idea which is formed of it is that God manifests Himself in some individual thing, and does this at the same time in opposition to the essential character of this thing.

The true miracle in Nature is the manifestation of Spirit, and the true manifestation of Spirit is fundamentally the Spirit of Man and his consciousness of the rationality of Nature, his consciousness that in these scattered elements, and in these manifold contingent things, conformity to law and reason are essentially present. In this religion, however, the world appears as a complexity of natural things which affect each other in a natural way, and stand in an intelligible connection with each other, and the necessity for miracles is present so long as that connection is not conceived of as the