Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/297

. The Greek gods themselves are not symbolical; they are what they represent, just as the conception of a work of art means the giving expression to what is meant, and does not mean that what is inward is something different from what is outwardly seen. Even if the beginnings of the Greek god are to be traced back to some such ancient symbolic representation, still what this is actually made into has become the work of art which perfectly expresses what it is intended to be. Many have sought, and especially Creuzer, to investigate the historical origin of the Greek gods, and the signification which lies at the basis of their character. But if the god is a subject for art, that alone is a good work of art which exhibits him as what he actually is. In the religions of nature this is a mystery, something inward, a symbol, because the outward form does not actually reveal the meaning which lies in this mystery, the idea rather being that it is merely intended to reveal it. Osiris is a symbol of the sun, and similarly Hercules and his twelve labours have reference to the months; thus he is a god of the calendar, and no longer the modern Greek god. In the mysteries, the content, the manifestation, is essentially symbolical. The principal symbols had reference to Ceres, Demeter, Bacchus, and the secrets connected with these. As Ceres, who seeks her daughter, is in the language of prose the seed that must die in order to retain its true essence and to bring it into life, so, too, the seed and the germination of the seed are in turn something symbolical; for, as in the Christian religion, they have the higher signification of resurrection, or they can be taken as meaning that the same holds good of Spirit, whose true essence or potential nature can bear blossoms only through the annulling of the natural will. Thus the meaning changes about; at one time this content signifies an idea, some process, and then again the idea, the signification, may itself be the symbol for something else. Osiris is the Nile which is dried up by Typhon, the