Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/89

 way, he would, as has been already stated, correspond merely with the perception of space, a sensuous universality of perception which is itself merely abstract. Here, on the contrary, the substantial element is commensurate with the form, and the latter is then physical universality—light, which has darkness over against it. Air, breath, &c., are also determinations which are physical, but they are not in this way the Ideal itself, are not universal individuality, subjectivity. It is in light which manifests itself that we have the moment of self-determination, of individuality, of subjectivity. Light appears as light generally, as universal light, and then as nature in a particular specific form; nature in the form of special objects reflected into itself as the essential element of particular things.

Light must not here be understood as meaning the sun. It may indeed be said that the sun is the most prominent light, but it stands beyond and above us as a particular body, as a special individual object. The Good, the light, on the contrary, has within itself the root of subjectivity, but only the root; accordingly, it is not posited as thus individual, existing apart by itself; and thus light is to be taken as subjectivity, as the soul of things.

(b.) This religion as it actually exists.

This Religion of Light or of the immediate Good is the religion of the ancient Parsis, founded by Zoroaster. There still exist some communities who belong to this religion in Bombay and on the shores of the Black Sea, in the neighbourhood of Baku, where those naphtha springs are specially frequent, in the accidental proximity of which some have imagined they find an explanation of the fact that the Parsis have chosen fire as an object of worship. From Herodotus and other Greek authors we derive some information regarding this religion, but it is only in later times that a more accurate knowledge of it has been arrived at by the discovery of the principal and