Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/235

 thus, on the one hand, man is related, as it were, to the negation of his merely natural life, and, on the other hand, to a God in whom the human element is itself affirmative and an essential characteristic. Man thus, as occupying such a relation to God, is free. What exists in men as concrete individuals is represented as being something divine and substantial, and man in all that constitutes his essential nature, in all that has any value for him, is present in what is Divine. Out of his passions, says one of the ancients, man has made his gods, i.e., out of his spiritual powers.

In these powers self-consciousness has its essential attributes for its object, and knows that in them it is free. It is not, however, particular individual subjectivity which has itself as its object in these essential characteristics, and which is conscious that the well-being of its particular nature is based on them. This is the case in the religion of the One where it is only this immediate definite existence, this particular natural existence of the particular subject or individual, which is the end, and where it is the individual, and not his universality, which constitutes what is essential; and where, further, the servant has his own selfish aims. Here, on the other hand, self-consciousness has for its object its specific nature, its unisality as manifested in the divine powers. Self-consciousness is consequently raised above the need of making any absolute claim to have its immediate individuality recognised, it is raised above the need of troubling about this, and it finds its essential satisfaction in a substantial objective Power. It is only the Moral, what is universal and rational, which is held to be in and for itself essential, and the freedom of self-consciousness consists of the essentiality of its true nature and its rationality. The sum and substance of the phase upon which the religious spirit has now entered may be expressed thus. God is in His own nature the mediation which man expresses. Man recognises himself in God