Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/236

 relation to Him which did not reflect Him, and through which He did not shine as through Himself. And what is the third thing supposed to be; what are we supposed to be who have brought this show or semblance into relation with its Essence, and referred it back to its central point, and have been the means whereby the Essence first manifested itself and appeared in itself? What would this third thing be? What would we be? We would represent a knowledge whose existence was presupposed in an absolute way, in fact an independent act of a formal universality which embraced everything in itself, and in which that necessarily existing unity which is in-and-for-itself would itself be included as a mere phenomenon or semblance without objectivity.

If we form a more definite conception of the relation which is set forth in this determination, then it will be seen that the elevation to God of determinate Being, of Nature, and of natural Being in general, and, along with this, of our consciousness, the active form of this elevation itself, is simply religion or piety which rises to God in a subjective way only, either simply in the shape of an act of transition whereby we disappear in God, or by setting ourselves over against Him as a semblance or illusion. If the finite were thus to disappear in Him, He would be merely the absolute substance, from which nothing proceeds, and into which nothing returns to itself, and even to form ideas of or to think of the absolute substance would be already too much, something which would itself have to disappear. If, however, the relation of reflection is still preserved, the elevation of the pious mind to God, in the sense that religion as such, and consequently the subjective for itself, continues to represent what has Being and is independent, then what is primarily independent or self-existent, and the elevation to which constitutes religion, is something produced by religion, something conceived of, postulated, thought or believed, an appearance or semblance merely, not anything truly independent which starts from itself.