Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/43

 unity. The activity of the will, therefore, does not arrive at freedom of the will—does not arrive at a content which, being determined through the unity of the Notion, would consequently be rational, objective, and in accordance with right. This unity, on the contrary, remains the merely potentially existent substantial Power existing in seclusion, namely, Brahma, which has let go actuality as mere contingency, and now abandons it entirely to its own wild caprice.

Worship here is first of all a certain attitude of the self-consciousness Brahma, and then afterwards to the rest of the divine world existing outside of him.

I. As regards the first attitude, that towards Brahma, we find that it is specially marked off and peculiar exactly in proportion as it keeps itself isolated from the rest of the concrete, religious, and temporal fulness of life.

1. Brahma is thought, man is a thinking being, thus Brahma has essentially an existence in human self-consciousness. Man, however, is essentially characterised here as a thinking being, or, in other words, thought as such, and in the first place as pure theory has universal existence here, because thought itself as such, as inherently Power, is given a determinate character, and consequently has in it form generally, namely, abstract form, or the character of determinate Being in general.

Man, indeed, is not only a thinking being, but is here essentially thought; he is conscious of himself as pure thought; for it has just been stated that here thought as such comes into existence; here man has the general idea of it within himself. In other words, he is actually self-conscious thought, for thought is implicitly Power, but Power itself is just that infinite negativity, that negativity relating itself to itself, which is actual Being, Being-for-self. But Being-for-self, enclosed within the universality of thought generally, exalted in it to free equality with itself, is the soul of a living creature only,