Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/344

 his object, together with his heart, his devotion, and his will, and when he has attained to this height of devoutness he has got rid of the sense of separation which marks the standpoint of consciousness. It is possible also from the standpoint of consciousness to reach this subjectivity, this feeling that the object is not foreign to consciousness, this absorption of the spirit in those depths which do not represent something distant, but rather absolute nearness and presence.

This doing away with the separation can, however, in turn be conceived of as something foreign to consciousness, as the grace of God, which man has to acquiesce in as something foreign to his own nature, and his relation to which is of a passive sort. It is against this separation that the formula is directed which says that it is with religion as such we have got to do, i.e., with the subjective consciousness which has in itself what God wills. It is in the subject accordingly that the inseparability of subjectivity and of the Other or objectivity exists; or, to put it otherwise, the subject as containing in itself the real relation is an essential element in the whole range of thought. Regarded from this standpoint, the subject is accordingly raised to the rank of an essential characteristic. It is in harmony with the freedom of Spirit that it should thus recover its freedom, that there should be no standpoint at which it is not in company with itself. That it is religion which is objective to itself is a truth which is contained in the notion or conception of the absolute religion, but only in the conception. This conception or notion is one thing, and the consciousness of this notion is another.

Thus in the absolute religion as well the notion may potentially contain the truth referred to, but the consciousness of this is something different. This then is the phase of thought which has reached consciousness and come to the front in the formula which says that it is with religion we have to do. The Notion is itself still