Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/246

 independent or self-sufficing element. On the contrary, this latter was found only in spiritual subjectivity. Subjectivity as such which is full of content, the subjectivity which determines itself in accordance with ends, cannot have in it a merely natural content. Greek imagination did not, accordingly, people Nature with gods after the fashion of the Hindus, for whom the form of God seems to spring out of all natural forms. The Greek principle is rather subjective freedom, and hence the natural is clearly no longer worthy to constitute the content of the divine. But, on the other hand again, this free subjectivity is not yet the absolutely free subjectivity, not the Idea, which would have truly realised itself as Spirit, i.e., it is not yet universal infinite subjectivity. We are only at the stage which leads to this. The content of free subjectivity is still particular; it is spiritual indeed, but since Spirit has not itself for its object, the particularity is still natural, and is even still presented as the one essential characteristic in the spiritual gods.

Thus Jupiter is the firmament, the atmosphere (in Latin we have still the expression sub jove frigido), what thunders; but besides being this natural principle, he is not only the father of gods and men, but also the political god, representing the law and morality of the State, that highest power on earth. He is, moreover, in addition to this, a many-sided moral power, the god of hospitality in connection with the old customs at a time when the relationship of the different states was not as yet well defined, for hospitality had essentially reference to the moral relationship of citizens belonging to different states.

Poseidon is the sea, like Oceanos, Pontus; he restrains the wildness of the elements, but he is also included amongst the new gods. Phœbus is the god who has knowledge, and, in accordance with analogy and substantial logical definition, he corresponds to the light and is the reflex or reminiscence of the sun-power.