Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/359

 starts from the fact that there are different forms of existence which stand to each other in a relation of opposition, namely, God, who has opposed to Him an estranged world, and a world which is estranged from its own essential Being. Reconciliation is the negation of this separation, of this division; it means that each recognises itself, finds itself and its essential nature, in the other. Reconciliation is thus freedom; but it is not something in a state of repose, something which simply is; on the contrary, it is activity. All that we mean by reconciliation, truth, freedom, represents a universal process, and cannot therefore be expressed in a single proposition without becoming one-sided. The main idea which in a popular form expresses the truth, is that of the unity of the divine and human natures; God has become Man. This unity is at first potential only, but being such it has to be eternally produced or brought into actual existence; and this act of production is the freeing process, the reconciliation which in fact is possible only by means of the potentiality. The Substance which is identical with itself is this unity, which as such is the basis, but which as subjectivity is what eternally produces itself.

The final result of the whole of philosophy is that this Idea only is the absolute truth. In its pure form it is the logical result, but it is likewise the result of a study of the concrete world. What constitutes the truth is that Nature, life, Spirit, are thoroughly organic, that each separate thing is merely the mirror of this Idea, in such a way that the Idea exhibits itself in it as in something isolated, as a process in it, and thus it manifests this unity in itself.

The Religion of Nature is the religion which occupies the standpoint of consciousness only. This standpoint is to be found in the Absolute Religion as well, but it exists within it only as a transitory moment. In the Religion of Nature God is represented as an “Other,” as present in a natural shape; or, to put it otherwise, religion appears in the form merely of consciousness. The