Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/36

 Such are the three fundamental determinations: the whole is represented by a figure with three heads, which again is symbolical and wholly without beauty.

The true Third, according to the deeper conception, is Spirit. It is the return of the One to itself; it is its coming to itself. It is not merely change, but is the change in which the difference is brought to reconciliation with the First, in which the duality is annulled.

But in this religion, which still belongs to nature, the Becoming is conceived of as mere becoming, as mere change; not as a change of the difference by means of which the unity produces itself as an annulling of differentiation and the taking of it up into unity. Consciousness, Spirit, is also a change in the First, that is, in the immediate unity. The Other is the act of judgment or differentiation, the having an Other over against one—I exist as knowing—but in such a manner that while the Other is for me, I have returned in that Other to myself, into myself.

The Third, instead of being the reconciler, is here merely this wild play of begetting and destroying. Thus the development issues only in a wild whirl of delirium. This difference, viz., the Third, is essentially based upon the standpoint of natural religion and based upon it in its entirety.

These differentiations are now grasped as Unity—as Trimurti—and this again is conceived of as the Highest. But just as this is conceived of as Trimurti, each person too in turn is taken independently and alone, so that each is itself totality, that is, the whole deity.

In the older part of the Vedas it is not Vishnu, and still less Siva, that is spoken of; there Brahma, the One, is alone God.

Not only is this principal basis and fundamental determination in the Indian mythology thus personified, but all else too is superficially personified by means of imagination. Imposing natural objects, such as the