Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/237

 outward form of the Divine in it; and (C.) its form of worship as the movement of self-consciousness in relation to its essential powers.

A.

THE GENERAL CONCEPTION OR NOTION.

The fundamental characteristic here is subjectivity as the self-determining Power. This subjectivity and wise power we have already met with under the form of the One who is as yet undetermined within Himself, and whose end, as it appears in the sphere of reality, is accordingly the most limited possible. The next stage, now, is that this subjectivity, this wise power or powerful wisdom, particularises itself within itself. This stage, just in consequence of this, is, on the one hand, the lowering of universality, of abstract unity and infinite power, to a condition of limitation within a circle of particularity, though, on the other hand, again, it at the same time involves the elevation of the limited individuality of the real end as against universality. In the region of the particular, what shows itself here is both of these movements, and this accordingly is the general characteristic of this stage. We have next to consider the fact that from one point of view, the determinate notion, the content of the self-determining Power, which is a particular content owing to its being in the element of subjectivity, makes itself subjective within itself. There actually are particular ends; they make themselves subjective, to begin with, on their own account, and so we get a definite sphere composed of a number of particular divine subjects. Subjectivity, as end, is self-determination, and hence it has particularisation in it—particularisation, in fact, as such, in the form of a world of concretely existing differences which exist as so many divine forms. Subjectivity in the Religion of Sublimity has already a definite end,