Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/154

 its own subjective character, it is only its thought. What gives body to this Good is accordingly taken from natural caprice, from what is accidental, from passion, &c. This subject is further the consciousness that objectivity is shut up within it itself, and that this objectivity has no permanent existence; it is only the principle of identity which has for it validity; this subject is something abstract, it can be filled up with any kind of content, since it has the power to subsume every content which is thus planted in the heart of Man. Subjectivity is thus caprice itself, and is, in short, the knowledge of that power belonging to it whereby it produces objectivity or the Good and gives it a content.

The other development of this point of view, accordingly, is that the subject has no independent existence, is not for itself in reference to the unity which it has reached by emptying itself, it does not preserve its particularity as against it, but has for its specific aim self-absorption in the unity of God. The subject has thus no particular end, nor any objective end beyond simply the glory of the one God. What we have here is religion; there is in it an affirmative relation to its Essence which is constituted by this One, in it the subject yields itself up. This religion has the same objective content as the Jewish religion, but the relation in which men stand to one another is broadened; there is no particularity left in it, the Jewish idea of national value which establishes the relation in which Man stands to the One, is wanting here. Here there is no limitation, Man is related to this One as a purely abstract self-consciousness. This is the characteristic of the Mohammedan religion. It forms the antithesis of Christianity, because it occupies a like sphere with the Christian religion. It is, as it were, the Jewish spiritual religion, but this God exists for self-consciousness in Spirit which has merely abstract knowledge, and occupies a stage which is one with that occupied by the Christian religion,