Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/245

, but also Dike, the Eumenides, the Erinyes; the Oath too and Styx are counted as amongst the ancient gods. They are distinguished from the later ones by this, that although they are what is spiritual, they are spiritual as a power existing only within itself, or as a rude undeveloped form of Spirit. The Erinyes are those who judge only inwardly, the oath is this particular certainty in my conscience, its truth lies, even if I take it outwardly, within myself. We may compare the oath with conscience.

Zeus, on the contrary, is the political god, the god of laws, of sovereignty, of laws definitely recognised, however, and not of the laws of conscience. Conscience has no legal authority in the State. If men appeal to conscience, one man may have one kind of conscience and another another, and thus it is positive law alone which has authority here. In order that conscience may be of the right kind, it is necessary that what it knows as right should be objective, should be in conformity with objective law, and should not merely dwell within. If conscience is right, then it is this as something recognised by the State, when the State has an ethical constitution.

Nemesis is likewise an ancient deity. It is merely the formal element which brings down what is lofty, what exalts itself; it is the merely levelling principle, envy, the putting down of what is distinguished or exalted, so that it may be on a level with other things. In Dike we have merely strict abstract justice. Orestes is prosecuted by the Eumenides and is acquitted by Athene, by the moral law, by the State. Moral law or justice is something different from bare strict justice; the new gods are the gods of moral law.

But the new gods have themselves in turn a double nature, and unite in themselves the natural and the spiritual. In the real view of the Greeks the natural element or nature-power was undoubtedly not the truly