Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/157

 it appears as its own objectivity, it knows the Universal as being in itself, as something which it produces out of itself, it is the subjectivity which is independent, for itself, self-conscious, determines itself within itself, and is thus the complete development of the subjective extreme until it has reached the Idea in itself. The defect here is that this is merely formal, that it misses having true objectivity, it represents the extreme point of formal spiritual development without inner necessity. If the Idea is to get a truly complete form, it is necessary that the objectivity should be set free, should be the totality of objectivity in itself.

The result of this objectivity, therefore, is, that everything in the subject is refined away, without objectivity, without fixed character, without development in God. This final and culminating point thus reached by the formal culture of our day is at the same time the most extreme crudeness, because it possesses merely the form of culture.

We have so far recognised the presence of these two mutually opposing extremes in the development of the Spiritual Community. The one was that unfreedom, that servitude of the Spirit in the absolute region of freedom; the other was abstract subjectivity, subjective freedom without content.

3. What we have finally still to consider is, that subjectivity develops the content out of itself, but does this in accordance with necessity—knows and recognises the content to be necessary and that it is objective, that it has an essential existence of its own, is in-and-for-itself. This is the standpoint of philosophy, according to which the content takes refuge in the Notion and by means of thought gets its restoration and justification.

This thought is not merely the process of abstraction and determination which is governed by the law of identity; this thought is itself essentially concrete, and thus it is comprehension, grasping in the Notion, it means that