Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/300

 can within the mind itself come to be what has not happened, is something which belongs to the higher privilege of free self-consciousness, where evil is not merely act, but is something fixed and settled, and has its seat in the heart, in the guilty soul. The free soul can purify itself from this evil. Faint resemblances of this inward conversion do occur, but the general character of reconciliation here is rather outward purification. With the Greeks this too is something belonging to ancient times. A couple of instances of this are well known in connection with the history of Athens. A son of Minos was slain in Athens, and on account of this deed a purification was undertaken. Æschylus relates that the Areopagus acquitted Orestes; the rock of Athena stood him in good stead. The reconciliation here is regarded as something outward, not as inward confession. The idea expressed in Œdipus at Colonos savours of Christian thought; in it this old Œdipus, who slew his father and married his mother, and who was banished along with his sons, is raised to a place of honour among the gods; the gods call him to themselves. Other sacrifices belong still more to the outward mode of reconciliation. This is the case with the sacrifices to the dead, which are intended to propitiate the Manes. Achilles, for example, slew a number of Trojans on the grave of Patroclus, his intention being to restore the uniformity of destiny on both sides.

III.

THE RELIGION OF UTILITY OR OF THE UNDERSTANDING.

A.

THE GENERAL CONCEPTION OF THIS STAGE.

In the Religion of Beauty empty necessity was the ruling principle, and in the Religion of Sublimity unity in the form of abstract subjectivity. In the latter