Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/316

 preceding the present one, free, universal, and moral powers constitute the object of adoration. Although they are limited, still they have an objective, independently existing content, and in the very act of contemplating them the ends of individuality melt away, and the individual is raised above his needs and necessities. They are free, and the individual attains to freedom in them; just because of this he glories in his identity with them, he enjoys their favour and is worthy of it, for he has no interests opposed to theirs, and in his needs and necessities, and in general in his particular existence, he is not an end to himself. Whether he will succeed in carrying out particular ends or not is a question he refers to the oracles only, or else he surrenders them to necessity. The individual ends here have, to begin with, a negative signification only, and are not something having a complete and independent existence.

In this religion of happiness, however, it is the self-seeking of the worshippers which is reflected in their practical gods in the shape of power, and which seeks in them and from them the satisfaction of its subjective interests. Self-seeking has in it a feeling of dependence, and just because it is purely finite, this feeling is peculiar to it. The Oriental who lives in light; the Hindu who sinks his self-consciousness in Brahma; the Greek who yields up his particular ends in the presence of necessity, and beholds in the particular powers his own powers, powers which are friendly towards him, which inspire and animate him, and are in unity with him—lives in his religion without the feeling of dependence. Far from being dependent, he is free—free before his God. It is only in Him that he possesses his freedom, and he is dependent only outside of his religion, for in it he has thrown away his dependence. Self-seeking again, need, necessity, subjective happiness, the pleasure-seeking life, which wills itself, keeps to itself, feels itself oppressed, starts from the feeling that its interests are