Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/250

 form them, as a consequence of this, on the other hand, the limitedness of the particular is advanced to substantial universality. We thereby get the unity of the two; we have the divine end made human, and the human end elevated to the divine. This gives us the heroes, the demi-gods. Specially significant in this respect is the figure of Hercules. He has human individuality; he has worked very hard, and by his virtue he has obtained heaven. The heroes are thus not gods straight off; they have first by labour to put themselves into the rank of the Divine. For the gods of spiritual individuality, although now at rest, are yet what they are only through their struggle with the Titans. This potentiality or inherent nature of theirs gets an explicit form in the heroes. Thus the spiritual individuality of the heroes is higher than that of the gods themselves; they are actually what the gods are implicitly; they represent the carrying into effect of what is implicit, and if they have also to struggle and work, this is a working off of the natural element which the gods still have in themselves. The gods come out of the powers of Nature; the heroes, again, come out of the gods.

Since the spiritual gods are thus the result reached through the overcoming of the powers of Nature, though they exist in the first instance only through these, they have their development or becoming in themselves, and manifest themselves as concrete unity. The powers of Nature are contained in them as their basis, although this, their implicit nature, is likewise transfigured. Hence, in the case of the gods, we have this reminiscence or echo of the natural elements, a feature which Hercules does not possess. There are, indeed, several signs that the Greeks themselves were conscious of the presence of this difference. In Æschylus, Prometheus says that he placed his consolation, his confidence, and satisfaction in the fact that a son would be born to Zeus who would hurl him from his throne. This prophecy of the overthrow of the