Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/242

 wide extended earth, the shades of Tartaros, the night of Erebos, as also Eros, adorned beyond all with beauty. We see the totality of particularity originating here; the earth, the positive element, the universal basis; Tartaros, Erebos, Night, the negative element, and Eros, the uniting and active element. The particular elements are now themselves productive; the earth produces the heavens out of itself, brings forth the hills without fructifying love, the desolate Pontus, but when united with the sky bears Oceanos and its rulers. She further brings forth the Cyclopes, the forces of Nature as such, while the earlier children, natural things, themselves exist as subjects. The Earth and the Sky are thus the abstract powers which, by fructifying themselves, cause the sphere of natural particular things to come into existence. The youngest child is the inscrutable Cronos. Night, the second moment, brings forth all that from the natural side has the moment of negation within itself. Thirdly, these particular forms unite in a reciprocal relation, and beget the positive and negative. All these are conquered later on by the gods of spiritual subjectivity; Hecate alone remains in the form of Fate or Destiny as representing the natural side.

The primary power, that which rules over this circle of natural forces, is the abstraction in general out of which they have risen, Uranos; and inasmuch as he is power only as positing his abstraction, so that this last is alone what has valid worth, he drives away all his children. But the main offspring of Heaven is inscrutable Time, the youngest child. This latter conquers Uranos through the cunning of the Earth. Everything here is in the form of a subjective end, and cunning is the negative of force. But inasmuch as the particular forces make themselves free, and set up on their own account, Uranos calls them by a name suggestive of punishment, calls them Titans, whose wrong-doing is one day to be avenged on them.

These particular natural forces are also personified, but