Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/330

 concrete and finite, it is particularity, something which is inherently manifold, external, an actual condition, a kingdom, present objectivity, not beautiful objectivity, and consequently not complete or perfect subjectivity. It is through the end, the determinate determinateness, that the determinateness first returns into itself and is found in subjectivity. At first, however, it is finite determinateness, and owing to the subjective return into itself, it is finitude without any measure or standard, the false infinite-finitude.

This measureless finite has two sides or aspects which we must get to understand and have a firm grasp of, its potentiality and its empirical manifestation.

If we consider perfect determinateness in its potential form, we see that it is the absolute form of the Notion, the Notion, namely, in its determinateness, when it has come back into itself. The Notion is to begin with only the universal and abstract, the Notion in its potential form and as not yet posited. It is the true universal when, by means of particularity, it unites itself with itself, i.e., when by means of the mediation of particularity, of determinateness, by the act of going out of itself, and by the doing away with and absorption of this particularity, it returns to itself. This negation of the negation is the absolute form, the truly infinite subjectivity, the reality in its infinitude.

In the Religion of Utility it is just this infinite form which self-consciousness has come to represent to itself. This absolute form is in a special sense the characterisation of self-consciousness, the characterisation of Spirit. This is what constitutes the infinite importance of and necessity for the Roman religion.

This infinite subjectivity, which is infinite form, is the grand moment which has been gained for Power; it is what was wanting in the idea of God as Power, in the God of substantiality. It is true that in Power we had subjectivity, but Power has only single ends, or several