Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/319

 power of what is injurious and evil, to pray to the devil in fact. We do not at this stage get to the abstraction called the devil, abstract evil and wickedness in an absolutely definite form, because here the characteristics are finite, present realities with a limited content. It is only some special form of damage or defect which is here an object of fear and is revered. The concrete, which is finite, is a state, a form of reality which passes away, a kind and mode of Being which can be conceived of by reflection as an external universal, such as peace (Pax), tranquillity (Tranquillitas), the goddess Vacuna already are, and which received a fixed form from the unimaginative Romans. Such powers, which are partly allegorical and partly prosaic, are however chiefly and essentially of the kind whose fundamental character is represented by the ideas of defect and injury. Thus the Romans dedicated altars to the plague, to fever (Febris), to care (Angerona), and they revered hunger (Fames), and the blight (Robigo) which attacked the grain. In the joyous religion of art, this side of religion which consists of fear of what brings misfortune, is put into the background; the infernal powers, which might be regarded as hostile and powers to be dreaded, are represented by the Eumenides who are well disposed towards men.

It is difficult for us to understand how powers of that kind should be honoured as divine. When we have reached such ideas it is no longer possible to ascribe any definite character to what is Divine, and they can become objective only where the feeling of dependence and fear exists. This state of things represents the total absence of the Idea in any form, that decay of all truth which can happen only in such circumstances. Such a phenomenon can be explained only by the fact that Spirit is wholly shut up within the finite and the immediately useful, as is evident when we consider how amongst Romans arts and crafts connected with the most immediate needs and their satisfaction, are gods. Spirit has