Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/328

 one-sided position in reference to each other. This power is an end, and this end, the human, finite end, is the sovereignty of the world, and the realisation of this end is the sovereignty of men, of the Romans.

This universal end, taken in its real meaning, has its basis, its seat in self-consciousness, and this means that the independence of self-consciousness is posited, since the end is included within self-consciousness. On the one side we have a certain indifference in reference to concrete life, and on the other we have this reserve, this inwardness, which is an inwardness both of the divine nature and of the individual, though so far as the individual is concerned, it is a wholly abstract inwardness.

This explains what is a fundamental feature of Roman thought, namely, that the abstract person, the individual abstractly considered, is held to be of so much account. The abstract person is the individual regarded legally; and accordingly, the development of law, of the essential characteristics of property, is an important feature of the Roman way of regarding things. This law, or right, is limited to juridical law, to the law or rights of property.

There are higher laws or rights; the human conscience has its law or right, and this is as much a right as any other; but the law of morality, the law of ethics is something far higher. Here, however, this right no longer possesses its concrete and proper meaning, the truth rather being that abstract right, the right of the person, expresses merely what is contained in the definition of property. It is certainly personality, but it is abstract personality only, subjectivity in the sense just explained, which is given this lofty place.

These are the fundamental features of this Religion of Utility or Conformity to an End. There are contained in it moments, the union of which constitutes the essential character of the next and last stage of religion. The moments which are isolated in the religion of outward utility, but which are related to each other, and