Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/87

 as Universal is posited only in the subjectivity of consciousness; it is this subjectivity only which is infinite inner movement, in which all the determinateness of definite existence is cancelled, and which at the same time is present in existence in its most finite form.

This individual, accordingly, who represents for others the manifestation of the Idea, is a particular Only One, not some ones, for the Divine in some would become an abstraction. The idea of some is a miserable superfluity of reflection, a superfluity because opposed to the conception or notion of individual subjectivity. In the Notion once is always, and the subject must turn exclusively to one subjectivity. In the eternal Idea there is only one Son, and thus there is only One in whom the absolute Idea appears, and this One excludes the others. It is this perfect development of reality thus embodied in immediate individuality or separateness which is the finest feature of the Christian religion, and the absolute transfiguration of the finite gets in it a form in which it can be outwardly perceived.

This characteristic, namely, that God becomes Man, and consequently that the finite spirit has the consciousness of God in the finite itself, represents what is the most difficult moment of religion. According to a common idea, which we find amongst the ancients particularly, the spirit or soul has been forced into this world as into an element which is foreign to it; this indwelling of the soul in the body, and this particularisation in the form of individuality, are held to be a degradation of Spirit. In this is involved the idea of the untruth of the purely material side, of immediate existence. On the other hand, however, the characteristic of immediate existence is at the same time an essential characteristic, it is the final tapering point of Spirit in its subjectivity. Man has spiritual interests and is spiritually active; he can feel that he is hindered in