Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/260

 the manifestation of the divine consciously as its own work.

It is self-consciousness which grasps, interprets, gives form to what was, to begin with, abstract, whether it is inward or outward, and produces it in the form in which it is held to be God.

The manifestations in Nature or any particular immediate and external element, are not manifestations in the sense that the Essence is only to be regarded as a thought within our minds—as, for instance, when we speak of the forces of Nature and of its outward effects. Here it does not lie in the natural objects themselves, does not lie in the objectivity in them as such that they exist as manifestations of what is inward. As natural objects they exist only for our sense-perception, and for this they are not a manifestation of the universal. Thus it is not, for example, in light as such that thought, the universal, announces its presence. In the case of natural existence we must on the contrary first break through the husk behind which thought, that which is the inward element in things, hides itself.

What is necessary is that the natural, the external, should in itself and in its externality be directly exhibited as abrogated and taken up into something higher, and as being in its own nature manifestation, so that it has only meaning and significance as the outward expression and organ of thought and of the universal. Thought must be for sense-perception, that is, what is revealed is on the one hand the sensuous mode of truth, while on the other hand that which is perceived by the senses is at the same time thought, the universal. It is necessity that has to appear in a divine fashion, i.e., in definite existence as necessity in immediate unity with this concrete existence. This is posited necessity, i.e., definitely existing necessity, which exists as simple reflection into itself.

Imagination is now the organ with which