Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/82

 precipitated into externality and contingency, where out of unity, as out of Brahma, this wild notionless world of deities proceeds, and where the development, because it is not proportionate to the unity, breaks up into confusion—this state, devoid of anything to give it steadfastness, has now passed away.

This resumption into substantial unity, which is inherently subjective, has, however, two forms. The first form of resumption is that seen in the religion of the Parsees, and it takes place in a pure, simple manner. The other is the fermenting process, seen in the Syrian and Egyptian religions, where the fermentation of totality mediates itself into unity, and unity comes into existence in the strife of its elements.

1. The Religion of the Good or of Light.

(a.) Its notion or conception.

1. The resumption is as yet the pure simple one, but for that reason it is also abstract. God is known as the absolutely existent, which is determined within itself.

Here the determinate character is not an empirical, manifold one, but is just what is pure, universal, what is equal to itself; a determination of Substance, by which it ceases to be Substance, and begins to be subject. This unity, as self-determining, has a content, and that this content is what is determined by unity, and is in conformity with it, is the universal content, is what is called Good or the True; for those are only forms which belong to the further distinctions of knowing and willing, which in the highest form of subjectivity are but one truth, particularisations of this One truth.

The fact that this Universal is determined by the self-determination of Spirit, and by Spirit and for Spirit, is the side upon which it is Truth. In proportion as it is posited by Spirit, is a self-determination commensurate with its unity, is its own self-determination by which it