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 This is the kind of mediation which belongs to freedom. Freedom is not pure negation, it is not merely an act of flight and surrender. Freedom of that sort is not yet the true affirmative freedom, but is negative freedom only. It is the negation of what is in a merely natural state in so far as this itself exists as something negative, which first gives the affirmative determination of freedom. Since the “Other,” namely, the world, finite consciousness, with its servitude and contingent character, is negated, it follows that in this act of mediation the determination of freedom is to be found. The elevation or exaltation of Spirit is thus this particular elevation above the state of mere naturalness, but it is an elevation in which, if it is to become freedom, the subjective spirit must also be free in its own nature, for itself. This accordingly is at first seen only in the subject or individual. “God is the God of free men.”

It is, however, equally true that any further determination or characterisation takes place quite as much within the nature of God. God is Spirit, but He is Spirit in any essential sense only in so far as He is known to be the self-diremption of Himself, the producer of differentiation within Himself, the eternal act of creation, and in such a way that this creation of an “Other” is a return to Himself, a return to the knowledge of Himself. It is thus that God is a God of free men. Since it belongs to the essential character of God Himself that He should be in His very nature the “Other” of Himself, and that this “Other” is a determination or quality within His own nature, so that He thereby returns to Himself and the human element is reconciled to God, it follows that we thus get the determination which is expressed by saying that Humanity is itself in God. Thus man knows that what is human is a moment of the Divine itself, and consequently he stands in a free relation to God. For that to which he stands related as to his own essential being has the essential characteristics of humanity in itself, and


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 thus, on the one hand, man is related, as it were, to the negation of his merely natural life, and, on the other hand, to a God in whom the human element is itself affirmative and an essential characteristic. Man thus, as occupying such a relation to God, is free. What exists in men as concrete individuals is represented as being something divine and substantial, and man in all that constitutes his essential nature, in all that has any value for him, is present in what is Divine. Out of his passions, says one of the ancients, man has made his gods, i.e., out of his spiritual powers.

In these powers self-consciousness has its essential attributes for its object, and knows that in them it is free. It is not, however, particular individual subjectivity which has itself as its object in these essential characteristics, and which is conscious that the well-being of its particular nature is based on them. This is the case in the religion of the One where it is only this immediate definite existence, this particular natural existence of the particular subject or individual, which is the end, and where it is the individual, and not his universality, which constitutes what is essential; and where, further, the servant has his own selfish aims. Here, on the other hand, self-consciousness has for its object its specific nature, its unisality as manifested in the divine powers. Self-consciousness is consequently raised above the need of making any absolute claim to have its immediate individuality recognised, it is raised above the need of troubling about this, and it finds its essential satisfaction in a substantial objective Power. It is only the Moral, what is universal and rational, which is held to be in and for itself essential, and the freedom of self-consciousness consists of the essentiality of its true nature and its rationality. The sum and substance of the phase upon which the religious spirit has now entered may be expressed thus. God is in His own nature the mediation which man expresses. Man recognises himself in God

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 and God and man say of each other—That is spirit of my spirit. Man is Spirit just as God is Spirit. He has also, it is true, finitude and the element of separation in him, but in religion he discards his finitude since his knowledge is the knowledge of himself in God.

We accordingly now pass to the Religion of Humanity and Freedom. The first form of this religion, however, is itself infected with the element of immediacy and naturalness, and thus we shall see the Human existing in God under what are still natural conditions. The inward element, the Idea, is indeed potentially what is true, but it has not yet been raised above the state of nature, which is the first and immediate form of its existence. The human element in God expresses His finitude only, and thus this religion, so far as its basis is concerned, belongs to the class of finite religions. It is, however, a religion of spirituality, because the mediation which, as separated and divided up into its moments, constituted the foregoing transition stages, is now put together so as to form a totality, and constitutes the foundation of this religion.

II.

THE RELIGION OF BEAUTY.

This Religion of Beauty, as has been already indicated, is seen in a definitely existing form in the religion of the Greeks, which, both in its inner and outer aspects, presents us with an infinite amount of inexhaustible material, beside which, owing to its sympathetic attractiveness, its grace, and charm, one would fain linger. Here, however, we cannot enter into details, but must confine ourselves to the essential characteristics of its notion or conception.

We must thus (A.) indicate the notion or conception of this sphere of religious thought; then (B.) consider the


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 outward form of the Divine in it; and (C.) its form of worship as the movement of self-consciousness in relation to its essential powers.

A.

THE GENERAL CONCEPTION OR NOTION.

The fundamental characteristic here is subjectivity as the self-determining Power. This subjectivity and wise power we have already met with under the form of the One who is as yet undetermined within Himself, and whose end, as it appears in the sphere of reality, is accordingly the most limited possible. The next stage, now, is that this subjectivity, this wise power or powerful wisdom, particularises itself within itself. This stage, just in consequence of this, is, on the one hand, the lowering of universality, of abstract unity and infinite power, to a condition of limitation within a circle of particularity, though, on the other hand, again, it at the same time involves the elevation of the limited individuality of the real end as against universality. In the region of the particular, what shows itself here is both of these movements, and this accordingly is the general characteristic of this stage. We have next to consider the fact that from one point of view, the determinate notion, the content of the self-determining Power, which is a particular content owing to its being in the element of subjectivity, makes itself subjective within itself. There actually are particular ends; they make themselves subjective, to begin with, on their own account, and so we get a definite sphere composed of a number of particular divine subjects. Subjectivity, as end, is self-determination, and hence it has particularisation in it—particularisation, in fact, as such, in the form of a world of concretely existing differences which exist as so many divine forms. Subjectivity in the Religion of Sublimity has already a definite end,


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 namely, the family, the nation. But this end is only realised in so far as the service of the Lord is not neglected. Through this latter requirement, which implies the abrogation of the subjective spirit so far as the determinate end is concerned, this end becomes a universal one. Thus if, on the one hand, through the breaking up of the one subjectivity into a multiplicity of ends, subjectivity is lowered to the condition of particularity, on the other hand, the particularity is set over against universality, and these differences in this way here become divine, universal differences. This particularity of the ends is thus the coming together of the abstract universality and the individuality of the end—their happy mean. This particularity thus constitutes the content of universal subjectivity, and in so far as it is posited in this element it gives itself a subjective form as a subject. With this we enter upon a really ethical stage, for when we have the Divine penetrating the determinate relations of Spirit in an actual form, determining itself in accordance with the substantial unity, we have what is ethical. And at the same time the real freedom of subjectivity also comes into existence, for the definite content is something which the finite self-consciousness has in common with its God. Its God ceases to be a “Beyond,” and has a definite content which on its determinate side is elevated to essentiality, and through the abolition and absorption of the immediate individuality or singleness has become an essentially existing content.

As regards the constituent element as such, the content that is, the substantial principle, as has been shown in the context, is just rationality, the freedom of Spirit, essential freedom. This freedom is not caprice, and must be clearly distinguished from it; it is essential, substantial freedom, the freedom which in its determinations determines itself. Since freedom, as self-determining, is the principle or basis of this relation, what we


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 have here is concrete rationality which contains essentially moral principles.

That freedom is just this, namely, the desiring or willing of nothing except itself, the desiring of nothing else than freedom, and that this is the true moral element from which moral determinations spring, or, in other words, that the formal element of self-determination changes round into the content, is a thought which cannot here be further followed up.

While morality constitutes the essential basis, still what comes first is morality in its immediacy. It is the rationality above referred to as absolutely universal or general, and thus still in its impersonal or substantial form. The rationality is not yet one subject, and has not yet left the virgin unity in which it is morality, and raised itself to the unity of the subject, or, in other words, has not plunged into itself.

Absolute necessity and the spiritual human embodiment are still separate. Determinateness, it is true, is posited in a general way, but this determinateness is, on the one hand, abstract, and on the other is left free to take on determinateness in manifold shapes, and is not yet taken back into that unity. That it should ever be so taken back would be due to the circumstance that the determinateness has developed into an infinite opposition or antithesis—as in the Religion of Sublimity—and has gone on increasing till it became infinite; for it is only when it has reached this extreme that it becomes at the same time capable of attaining to unity in itself. The entire circle of the gods, as these take on a definite form, must itself be taken up into and placed within the sphere of necessity as in a pantheon. But it is only capable of this, and is only worthy of attaining this, when its manifoldness and diversity become generalised into simple difference. Not till this happens is it adequate to that element, and so immediately identical in itself. The different spirits must be conceived of as


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 Spirit in such a way that Spirit is made to stand out distinctly as representing their essentially universal nature.

2. Because the unity of necessity is not yet carried back to the ultimate point of infinite subjectivity, the spiritual and essentially moral determinations appear as disconnected or lying outside of one another; the content is the fullest possible, but its constituent parts are disconnected.

Ethics in general must be distinguished from morality and ethics as the Greeks understood them; and by ethics in general is meant the subjectivity of ethics, that subjectivity which can give account of its principles and has an ethical intention, an ethical design and aim.

Morality is here as yet the substantial Being, the true Being of what is moral, but not as yet the knowledge of it. So far as the objective import is concerned, this means that just because one subjectivity, the particular reflection into self, is not yet present—and just in virtue of this fact—the moral content has no connecting element in it, its basis being constituted by the Πάθη, the essentially spiritual powers, the universal powers of the moral life, and chiefly of the practical life, life in the State, and, in addition to this, justice, bravery, the family, oaths, agriculture, science, and so on.

Closely connected with the fact that what is moral has no inner connection as it appears in these particular forms, is that other want of connection, namely, that the natural appears as something opposed to these spiritual powers. The determination of immediacy, which has this disconnected condition as its consequence, involves the further idea that the natural forces, the sky, the earth, rivers, the division of time, appear as opposed to the spiritual forces.

3. The last form of determinateness is that of the antithesis between essential self-consciousness and the finite self-consciousness, between the essential spirit and


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 the finite spirit. In this determinateness the form of the natural outward embodiment of subjectivity comes into view, the natural outward form is imagined by self-consciousness as something divine, and this divinity accordingly stands over against self-consciousness.

B.

THE OUTWARD FORM OF THE DIVINE.

(a.) The Conflict of the Spiritual and the Natural.

Since the fundamental determination is spiritual subjectivity, the power of Nature cannot be considered as being the essential power in its own right. Yet it is one of the particular powers, and as the most immediate is the first of those through whose abrogation the other spiritual powers first originate. We have seen the nature of the power of the One, and how His real and actual sublimity first resulted from creation. This one fundamental principle, as the self of the Absolute, is wanting here. Thus the starting-point here is within the sphere of what is immediately natural, which cannot at this stage appear as if created by the One. The unity in which these particular forms of the powers of Nature repose is not spiritual, but is, on the contrary, an essentially natural unity, chaos, in fact.

“But first of all,” sings Hesiod, “was Chaos” (Theog. v. 116). Chaos is thus itself something posited, but what the positing agent is we are not told. It is only said that it came into being. For the fundamental principle here is not the self, but rather the selfless, the necessity, of which it can only be said that it is. Chaos is the moving unity of the immediate, but it itself is not yet subject, particularity; hence it is not said of it that it begets, but as it only comes into being itself, so this necessity comes into being in turn out of it, namely, the


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 wide extended earth, the shades of Tartaros, the night of Erebos, as also Eros, adorned beyond all with beauty. We see the totality of particularity originating here; the earth, the positive element, the universal basis; Tartaros, Erebos, Night, the negative element, and Eros, the uniting and active element. The particular elements are now themselves productive; the earth produces the heavens out of itself, brings forth the hills without fructifying love, the desolate Pontus, but when united with the sky bears Oceanos and its rulers. She further brings forth the Cyclopes, the forces of Nature as such, while the earlier children, natural things, themselves exist as subjects. The Earth and the Sky are thus the abstract powers which, by fructifying themselves, cause the sphere of natural particular things to come into existence. The youngest child is the inscrutable Cronos. Night, the second moment, brings forth all that from the natural side has the moment of negation within itself. Thirdly, these particular forms unite in a reciprocal relation, and beget the positive and negative. All these are conquered later on by the gods of spiritual subjectivity; Hecate alone remains in the form of Fate or Destiny as representing the natural side.

The primary power, that which rules over this circle of natural forces, is the abstraction in general out of which they have risen, Uranos; and inasmuch as he is power only as positing his abstraction, so that this last is alone what has valid worth, he drives away all his children. But the main offspring of Heaven is inscrutable Time, the youngest child. This latter conquers Uranos through the cunning of the Earth. Everything here is in the form of a subjective end, and cunning is the negative of force. But inasmuch as the particular forces make themselves free, and set up on their own account, Uranos calls them by a name suggestive of punishment, calls them Titans, whose wrong-doing is one day to be avenged on them.

These particular natural forces are also personified, but


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 this personification is, so far as they are concerned, superficial only; for the content of Helios, for example, or of Oceanos, is something natural, and not superficial Power. Thus, if Helios is represented in human fashion as active, what we have is the empty form of personification. Helios is not god of the sun, not the sun-god (the Greeks never express themselves thus), and Oceanos is not the god of the sea in such a way that the god and that over which he rules are distinguished from each other; on the contrary, these powers are natural powers.

The first moment in this natural sphere is thus Chaos posited together with its moments by abstract necessity; the second is the period of begetting under the rule of Uranos, in which these abstract moments which have proceeded out of chaos are the productive element; the third is the period of the sovereignty of Cronos, when the particular natural powers, themselves just born, give birth in turn to something else. In this way what is posited is itself the positing factor, and the transition to Spirit is made. This transition shows itself more definitely in Cronos, in that he himself brings about the downfall. He is sovereign pre-eminently through the abrogation of the immediate divine forms. But he himself is immediate, and thereby presents the contradiction of being, while in himself immediate, the abrogation of immediacy. He begets the spiritual gods out of himself; yet in so far as they are at first merely natural, he does away with them, and swallows them up. But his abrogation of the spiritual gods must itself be abrogated, and this is accomplished in its turn through cunning working against the natural force of Cronos. Zeus, the god of spiritual subjectivity, lives. Thus over against Cronos there appears his Other, and there arises, in fact, the conflict between the natural powers and the spiritual gods.

However much, then, this breaking up may take place, representing a state of things in which the natural powers


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 make their appearance as independent, still the unity of the spiritual and the natural—and this is what is essential—appears more and more clearly, and this unity is, moreover, not the neutralisation of the two, but is, on the contrary, that form in which the spiritual is not only the predominant element, but is also the ruling and determining factor, and in which the natural is ideal and brought into subjection.

The Greeks have expressed the consciousness of this subjugation of the natural powers by the spiritual element by telling how Zeus, through a war, founded the sovereignty of the spiritual gods, conquered the nature-power, and hurled it from its throne. It is spiritual powers accordingly that rule the world.

In this war of the gods we find the whole history of the Greek gods and their nature expressed. With the exception of this war, they have done nothing; and even when they take up the cause of an individual, or say that of Troy, this is no longer their history nor the historical development of their nature. But the fact that they, as representing the spiritual principle, attained to mastery over the natural and conquered it, is what constitutes their essential act, and forms the essential element in the ideas of the Greeks regarding them.

The natural gods are thus subdued, driven from their throne; the spiritual principle is victorious over the religion of nature, and the natural forces are banished to the borders of the world, beyond the world of self-consciousness, but they have also retained their rights. They are, while nature-powers, at the same time posited as ideal, or as in subjection to the spiritual element, so that they constitute a determination in what is spiritual, or in the spiritual gods themselves. This natural moment is still present in these gods, but is in them only as a kind of reminiscence of the nature element, only as one of their aspects.

To these old gods, however, belong not only


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, but also Dike, the Eumenides, the Erinyes; the Oath too and Styx are counted as amongst the ancient gods. They are distinguished from the later ones by this, that although they are what is spiritual, they are spiritual as a power existing only within itself, or as a rude undeveloped form of Spirit. The Erinyes are those who judge only inwardly, the oath is this particular certainty in my conscience, its truth lies, even if I take it outwardly, within myself. We may compare the oath with conscience.

Zeus, on the contrary, is the political god, the god of laws, of sovereignty, of laws definitely recognised, however, and not of the laws of conscience. Conscience has no legal authority in the State. If men appeal to conscience, one man may have one kind of conscience and another another, and thus it is positive law alone which has authority here. In order that conscience may be of the right kind, it is necessary that what it knows as right should be objective, should be in conformity with objective law, and should not merely dwell within. If conscience is right, then it is this as something recognised by the State, when the State has an ethical constitution.

Nemesis is likewise an ancient deity. It is merely the formal element which brings down what is lofty, what exalts itself; it is the merely levelling principle, envy, the putting down of what is distinguished or exalted, so that it may be on a level with other things. In Dike we have merely strict abstract justice. Orestes is prosecuted by the Eumenides and is acquitted by Athene, by the moral law, by the State. Moral law or justice is something different from bare strict justice; the new gods are the gods of moral law.

But the new gods have themselves in turn a double nature, and unite in themselves the natural and the spiritual. In the real view of the Greeks the natural element or nature-power was undoubtedly not the truly


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 independent or self-sufficing element. On the contrary, this latter was found only in spiritual subjectivity. Subjectivity as such which is full of content, the subjectivity which determines itself in accordance with ends, cannot have in it a merely natural content. Greek imagination did not, accordingly, people Nature with gods after the fashion of the Hindus, for whom the form of God seems to spring out of all natural forms. The Greek principle is rather subjective freedom, and hence the natural is clearly no longer worthy to constitute the content of the divine. But, on the other hand again, this free subjectivity is not yet the absolutely free subjectivity, not the Idea, which would have truly realised itself as Spirit, i.e., it is not yet universal infinite subjectivity. We are only at the stage which leads to this. The content of free subjectivity is still particular; it is spiritual indeed, but since Spirit has not itself for its object, the particularity is still natural, and is even still presented as the one essential characteristic in the spiritual gods.

Thus Jupiter is the firmament, the atmosphere (in Latin we have still the expression sub jove frigido), what thunders; but besides being this natural principle, he is not only the father of gods and men, but also the political god, representing the law and morality of the State, that highest power on earth. He is, moreover, in addition to this, a many-sided moral power, the god of hospitality in connection with the old customs at a time when the relationship of the different states was not as yet well defined, for hospitality had essentially reference to the moral relationship of citizens belonging to different states.

Poseidon is the sea, like Oceanos, Pontus; he restrains the wildness of the elements, but he is also included amongst the new gods. Phœbus is the god who has knowledge, and, in accordance with analogy and substantial logical definition, he corresponds to the light and is the reflex or reminiscence of the sun-power.


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 The Lycian Apollo has a direct connection with light, and the ideas connected with him come from Asia Minor: in the East the natural element, light, gets greater prominence. Phœbus decrees the pestilence in the Greek camp, and this is immediately connected with the sun. Pestilence is the effect of the hot summer, of the heat of the sun. The representations, too, of Phœbus have attributes and symbols that are closely connected with the sun.

The same divinities that were at an earlier stage Titanic and natural appear afterwards possessed of a fundamental characteristic which is spiritual and which is the ruling one, and in fact there has been a dispute as to whether there was any natural element left at all in Apollo. In Homer Helios is undoubtedly the Sun, but is at the same time brightness as well, the spiritual element which irradiates and illumines everything. But even at a later period, Apollo still has something of his natural element left, for he was represented with a nimbus round his head.

This is what we find to be the case generally, though it may not be particularly noticeable in the case of the individual gods. Perfect consistency is, however, not to be found here. An element appears at one time in a stronger and more pronounced form, and at another in a weaker form. In the Eumenides of Æschylus the first scenes are laid before the temple of Apollo. There we have the summons to worship, and first of all the worshippers are invited to adore the oracle-giver (Γαῖα), the principle of Nature, then Θέμις, already a spiritual power, though, like Dike, belonging to the ancient gods; next comes Night and then Phœbus—the oracle has passed over to the new gods. Pindar too speaks of a similar succession in reference to the oracle. He makes Night the first oraclegiver, then comes Themis, and next Phœbus. We thus have here the transition from natural forms to the new gods. In the sphere of Poetry, where these doctrines


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 originate, this is not to be taken historically as something so fixed as to preclude the possibility of there being any deviation from it.

Thus too the noise, the rustling of leaves, the light noise of suspended cymbals, which represent the first form in which the oracle was given, are mere natural sounds. It is not till a later period that a priestess appears who in human sounds, if not actually in clear and distinct sounds, gives forth the oracle. Similarly the Muses are first nymphs, springs, waves, the noise or murmuring of brooks. In every case the starting-point is some aspect of Nature, natural powers which are transformed into a god with a spiritual character. Such a transformation shows itself also in Diana. The Diana of Ephesus is still Asiatic, and is represented with many breasts and covered with images of animals. She has, in fact, as the basis of her character, natural life, the producing and nourishing power of Nature. On the other hand, Diana of the Greeks is the huntress who kills animals. She does not represent the idea of hunting generally, but the hunting of wild animals. And indeed by the bravery of spiritual subjectivity these animals, which in the earlier spheres of the religious spirit were thought of as having an absolute claim to exist, are subdued and killed.

Prometheus, who was also reckoned amongst the Titans, is an important and interesting figure. Prometheus is the power of Nature, but he is also the benefactor of men, for he taught them the first arts. He brought down fire from heaven for them; the power to kindle fire already implies a certain amount of civilisation; it means that man has already got beyond his primitive barbarism. The first beginnings of civilisation have thus been preserved in grateful remembrance in the myths. Prometheus also taught men to offer sacrifice in such a way that they too might have something of the offering. The animals, it was supposed, did not


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 belong to men, but to a spiritual power, i.e., men formerly ate no flesh. He, however, took the whole offering from Zeus, that is to say, he made two heaps, one of bones, over which he threw the skin of the animal, and another of the flesh, and Zeus laid hold of the first.

Sacrifice thus became a feast in which the gods had the entrails and the bones. This same Prometheus taught men to seize animals and use them as their means of sustenance; animals, it was formerly thought, should not be disturbed by men, and were held in high respect by them. Even in Homer mention is made of the suncattle of Helios, which were not to be interfered with by men. Amongst the Hindus and the Egyptians it was forbidden to slaughter animals. Prometheus taught men to eat flesh themselves and to leave to Jupiter only skin and bones.

But Prometheus is a Titan. He is chained to the Caucasus, and a vulture constantly gnaws at his liver, which always grows again—a pain which never ceases. What Prometheus taught men had reference only to such acquirements as conduce to the satisfaction of natural wants. In the mere satisfaction of these wants there is never any sense of satiety; on the contrary, the need is always growing and care is ever new. This is what is signified by this myth. In a passage in Plato it is said that Prometheus could not bring Politics to men, because the science of politics was preserved in the citadel of Zeus. The idea is thus here expressed that this science belonged to Zeus as his own peculiar property.

It is, indeed, gratefully mentioned that Prometheus makes life easier for men by introducing arts and handicrafts; but, spite of the fact that these are connected with the powers of the human mind, he still belongs to the Titans, for these arts are not in any sense laws, nor have they any moral force.

If the gods represent spiritual particularity looked at from the side of Substance, which breaks itself up so as to


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 form them, as a consequence of this, on the other hand, the limitedness of the particular is advanced to substantial universality. We thereby get the unity of the two; we have the divine end made human, and the human end elevated to the divine. This gives us the heroes, the demi-gods. Specially significant in this respect is the figure of Hercules. He has human individuality; he has worked very hard, and by his virtue he has obtained heaven. The heroes are thus not gods straight off; they have first by labour to put themselves into the rank of the Divine. For the gods of spiritual individuality, although now at rest, are yet what they are only through their struggle with the Titans. This potentiality or inherent nature of theirs gets an explicit form in the heroes. Thus the spiritual individuality of the heroes is higher than that of the gods themselves; they are actually what the gods are implicitly; they represent the carrying into effect of what is implicit, and if they have also to struggle and work, this is a working off of the natural element which the gods still have in themselves. The gods come out of the powers of Nature; the heroes, again, come out of the gods.

Since the spiritual gods are thus the result reached through the overcoming of the powers of Nature, though they exist in the first instance only through these, they have their development or becoming in themselves, and manifest themselves as concrete unity. The powers of Nature are contained in them as their basis, although this, their implicit nature, is likewise transfigured. Hence, in the case of the gods, we have this reminiscence or echo of the natural elements, a feature which Hercules does not possess. There are, indeed, several signs that the Greeks themselves were conscious of the presence of this difference. In Æschylus, Prometheus says that he placed his consolation, his confidence, and satisfaction in the fact that a son would be born to Zeus who would hurl him from his throne. This prophecy of the overthrow of the


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 rule of Zeus, to be accomplished through the manifested unity of the divine and the human which belongs to the heroes, is expressed also by Aristophanes; for Bacchus says to Hercules, “When Zeus dies and goes, thou wilt succeed him.”

(b.) Formless Necessity.

The unity which binds together the plurality of the particular gods is at first superficial only. Zeus rules them in fatherly, patriarchal fashion, which implies that the ruler does in the end what the others on the whole wish, while these give their assent to all that occurs. But this sovereignty is not serious. The higher absolute unity, in the form of absolute Power, stands over them as their pure and absolute power. This power is Fate or Destiny, simple necessity.

This unity, as being absolute necessity, has universal determinateness within it. It is the fulness of all determinations; but it is not developed in itself, the fact rather being that the content is divided in a particular way among the many gods who issue forth from this unity. It is itself empty and without content, despises all fellowship and outward embodiment, and rules in dread fashion over everything as blind, irrational, unintelligible power. It is unintelligible because it is the concrete alone of which we can form an intelligent conception; but this necessity is still abstract, and has not yet developed so as to have the conception of an end, has not yet reached definite determinations.

Necessity, accordingly, essentially relates itself to the world. For determinateness is a moment in necessity itself, and the concrete world is developed determinateness, the kingdom of finitude, of definite existence generally. Necessity has at first a merely abstract relation to the concrete world, and this relation is the external unity of the world, equality or uniformity simply, which is without any further determination in itself, and is


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 incomprehensible—Nemesis, in short. It brings down what is high and exalted, and thus establishes equality. But this equalising is not to be understood as meaning that when what pushes itself forward or is too high is brought down, what is low is, in its turn, raised up. On the contrary, that which is low is as it was meant to be; it is the finite which has no particular claims, and no kind of infinite value in itself to which it could appeal. It is thus not too low. It has in it power, however, to rise above the common lot and the ordinary limit of finitude, and when it thus acts in opposition to uniformity it is again thrust down by Nemesis.

If we now directly consider the relation of the finite self-consciousness to this necessity, we see that under the pressure of its iron power it is to have only an obedience without inward freedom. But one form of freedom is at least present when we look at the matter from the side of feeling. The Greek who has within him the feeling of the necessity calms his soul with that. It is so; there is nothing to be done against it; with this I must content myself; just in this feeling that I must be content with it, that this even pleases me, we have the freedom which is implied in the fact that it is mine.

This mental attitude implies that man has this simple necessity before him. In that he occupies the standpoint, “It is so,” he has set all that is particular on one side, has made a renunciation of and abstracts from all particular ends and interests. The vexation, the discontent which men feel consists just in this, that they stick to a definite end, and will not give this up; and then if things do not fit in with this end, or, as may happen, go quite contrary to it, they are dissatisfied. There is then no harmony between what is actually present and what men wish to have, because they have the “ought to be” within themselves—“That ought to be.”

Thus discontent, division, are inherently present; but


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 those who occupy the standpoint referred to cling to no aim, no interest, as against actually existing circumstances. Misfortune, discontent, is nothing but the contradiction implied in the fact that something is contrary to my will. If the particular interest is given up, then by this act I have retreated into this pure rest, into this pure Being, into this “is.”

There is here no consolation for man, but then it is not necessary. He requires consolation when he desires compensation for some loss; but here he has renounced the inner root of worry and discontent, and has wholly given up what is lost, because he has the power which enables him to look into necessity. It is, accordingly, nothing but a false illusion to imagine that consciousness is annihilated when brought into relation to necessity—that it relates itself to something which is absolutely beyond its own world, and finds in it nothing having a relationship with itself. Necessity is not one person, and accordingly consciousness does not exist in it on its own account, for itself, or in other words, it is not an individual or selfish oneness in its immediacy. In relation to that which is one person it is independent, wishes to be independent, to be for itself, and to stand on its own basis. The servant or vassal, in performing his service, in his condition of subjection, has fear, and in doing any base act against his master he has a self-seeking design. But in relation to necessity the subject appears as something which does not exist independently, or as determined for itself, it has, on the contrary, surrendered itself, retains no end for itself, and the revering of necessity is just this indeterminate attitude of self-consciousness, this attitude which is wholly devoid of the element of opposition. What we now-a-days call fate is just the opposite of this attitude of self-consciousness. We speak of just, unjust, merited fate. We use the word fate by way of explanation, that is, as suggesting the reason of any condition in which individuals are, or of the fate of


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 individuals. Here there is an external union of cause and effect by which an inherited evil, an ancient curse that rests on his house, breaks out in the individual. In such cases fate implies that there exists some sort of reason, but a reason that is at the same time away beyond the present, and fate is here nothing but a connection of causes and effects, of causes, which, so far as the person is concerned upon whom the fate falls, should be finite causes, and where there is nevertheless a hidden connection between that which the sufferer is in himself and that which befalls him as something unmerited.

The perception of and reverent regard for necessity is, on the other hand, the direct opposite of the foregoing. In it that mediation and the superficial reasoning about cause and effect are done away with. We cannot speak of a belief in necessity as if necessity were something essentially existing, or were a connection of relations, such as that of cause and effect, and as if it thus stood opposed to consciousness in some objective outward form. On the contrary, the expression “it is necessary” directly presupposes the abandonment of all argumentative reasoning, and the shutting up of the spirit within simple abstraction. Noble and beautiful characters are produced by this attitude on the part of the human spirit, which has thus given up that which, as the saying goes, fate wrests from us. It produces a certain grandeur and repose and that free nobility of soul which is also found amongst the ancients. This freedom is, however, only of the abstract kind, which merely stands above the concrete and particular, but does not actually come to be in harmony with what is definite, i.e., it is pure thought, Being, Being-within-self, the relinquishment of the particular. In the higher forms of religion, on the contrary, there exists the consolation that the absolute end and aim will be reached even in misfortune, so that the negative changes round into the affirmative. “The sufferings of the present are the path to bliss.”


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 Abstract necessity, as this abstraction of thought and of the return into self, is the one extreme; the other extreme is the singularity or individual existence of the particular divine powers.

(c.) Posited necessity or the particular gods, their appearance and outward form.

The divine particular powers belong to what is implicitly universal, to necessity, but they come out from it because it is not yet posited for itself as the Notion and determined as freedom. Rationality and the rational content are still in the form of immediacy, or, in other words, subjectivity is not posited as infinite subjectivity, and the individuality hence appears as external. The Notion is not yet revealed, and its definite existence as it here presents itself does not yet contain the content of necessity. But it is at the same time made plain that the freedom of the particular is merely the semblance of freedom, and that the particular powers are held within the unity and power of necessity.

Necessity is not in itself anything divine, or at least is not the divine in a general sense. We may indeed say that God is necessity, i.e., it is one of His essential qualities, though it may be one which is still imperfect, but we cannot say that necessity is God. For necessity is not the Idea, but rather abstract Notion. But Nemesis, and still more these particular powers, are already divine in as far as the former has a relation to definitely existing reality, while these powers again are in themselves characterised as distinguished from necessity, and consequently as distinguished from one another, and are contained in necessity as the unity of the wholly universal and particular.

Accordingly, because particularity is not yet tempered by the Idea, and necessity is not the fully concrete measure of wisdom, unlimited contingency of content makes its appearance in the sphere of the particular gods.


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 (#.) The contingency of form or outward embodiment.—The twelve principal gods of Olympus are not arranged in accordance with the Notion, and they do not constitute any system. One moment of the Idea, it is true, plays a leading part, to begin with, but it is not carried out in detail.

The divine powers of necessity being separate from it, are external and thus unmediated, merely immediate objects, natural existing things, such as sun, sky, earth, sea, mountains, men, kings, and so on. But they are also still held fast by necessity, and thus the natural element in them is abrogated. If no advance were made beyond the thought that these powers were, in their natural immediate form of existence, divine essentially existing beings, this would be a reversion to the Religion of Nature, in which light, or the sun, or some particular king is as immediate, God, while the inner element, the universal, has not yet reached that moment of the relation which, nevertheless, necessity essentially and absolutely contains in itself, since in the latter the immediate is merely something posited and abrogated.

But even if it is abrogated and preserved, the element of Nature is still a determinate characteristic of the particular powers, and because it is incorporated in self-conscious individuals it has become a fruitful source of contingent determinations. The determination of time, the year, the division of the months, still hang so much about the concrete gods that some, as Dupuis, for example, have even tried to make them into calendar gods. The idea, too, of the productive power of Nature, of beginning to be and ceasing to be, is seen to be operative within the sphere of the spiritual gods in the many points of agreement still existing between these gods and Nature. But when thus lifted up into the self-conscious form of these gods, those natural characteristics appear as contingent, and are changed into characteristics of self-conscious subjectivity, whereby they lose their original meaning. The


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 right to search for so-called philosophemes or philosophical ideas in the actions of these gods, must be freely granted. For instance, Zeus feasted with the gods for twelve days amongst the Ethiopians; Juno hung between heaven and earth, and so on. Ideas such as these, as also the endless number of amours ascribed to Zeus, have undoubtedly their primary source in an abstract conception which had reference to natural relations, natural forces, and to the regular and essential element in these, and thus we have the right to search after the conceptions aforesaid. These natural relations are, however, at the same time degraded to the rank of contingent things, since they have not retained their original purity, but are changed into forms which are in conformity with subjective human modes of thought. Free self-consciousness no longer concerns itself about such natural characteristics.

Another source of contingent determinations is the Spiritual itself, spiritual individuality and its historical development. The god is revealed to man in what befalls himself or in the fate of a state, and this becomes an event which is regarded as an action of the god, as revealing the goodwill or enmity of the god. We get an infinitely manifold, but at the same time a contingent content, when any event, such as good fortune or bad fortune, is elevated to being the action of a god, and serves to determine more definitely and in individual instances, the actions of the god. As the God of the Jews gave a particular land to the people and led their fathers out of Egypt, so a Greek god is conceived of as having done this or the other thing which happens to a people, and which they look on as divine or as a self-determination of the divine.

We have further to take into consideration also the locality in which, and the time at which, the consciousness of a god first began. This element of origin within defined limits, united with the joyousness of the Greek character, is the source of a number of delightful stories.


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 Finally, the free individuality of the gods is the main source of the manifold contingent content ascribed to them. They are, if not infinite, absolute spirituality, at least concrete subjective spirituality. As such, they do not possess an abstract content, and there is not only one quality in them, on the contrary, they unite in themselves several characteristics. Did they possess only one quality this would be merely an abstract inner element, or simply a certain signification, and they themselves would be merely allegories, i.e., would be concrete in imagination merely. But in the concrete fulness of their individuality they are not tied down to the limited lines and modes of operation belonging to one exclusive quality. On the contrary, they can now go about freely in what are voluntary but are at the same time arbitrary and contingent directions.

So far we have considered the embodiment of the divine as it is based in the implicit or potential nature belonging to it, i.e., in the individual nature of these deities, in their subjective spirituality, in their chance appearances in time and place, or as it occurs in the involuntary transformation of natural determinations into the manifestation of free subjectivity. This embodiment has now to be considered as it appears in its perfected form united with consciousness. This is the manifestation of the divine powers which is for “Other,” that is, for subjective self-consciousness, and is known and embodied in the conception consciousness forms of it.

(#.) The manifestation and conceiving of the divine.—The actual form which the god attains to in his appearance and manifestation to the finite spirit, has two sides. The god, that is to say, appears in externality, and owing to this a division, a separation, takes place which determines itself in such a way that the manifestation has two sides, one of which pertains to the god and the other to the finite spirit. The side which pertains to the god is his self-revelation, his showing of himself. Looked


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 at from this side, all that belongs to self-consciousness is passive reception. The mode of this manifestation is one which exists pre-eminently for Thought; what is eternal is taught, given, and its existence does not depend on the caprice of the individual. Dreams, the oracle, are manifestations of this kind. The Greeks embodied this idea in all kinds of forms. For instance, a divine image fallen from heaven, or a meteor, or thunder and lightning, are reckoned as a manifestation of the divine. Or it may be this manifestation, as the first and as yet inarticulate proclamation of the divine to the consciousness, is the rustling of the trees, the stillness of the woods in which Pan is present.

Since this stage is only the stage of freedom and rationality in their first form, the spiritual power either appears in outward guise—and this is the basis of that natural aspect which still attaches to this standpoint—or if the powers and laws that make themselves known to the inward thought of man are spiritual and moral, they are this to begin with because they are, and it is not known whence they come.

The manifestation is now the boundary-line of both sides, which separates them and at the same time relates them to each other. At bottom, however, the activity belongs to both sides, and the true comprehension of this undoubtedly constitutes a serious difficulty. This difficulty also appears again later on in connection with the idea of the grace of God. Grace enlightens the heart of man, it is the Spirit of God in man, so that man can be regarded in relation to its work in him as passive, and in such a way that it is not his own activity which is manifested in his actions. In the Notion, however, this double activity is to be conceived of as one. Here in the present stage, this unity of the Notion is not yet made explicit, and the side of productive activity, which belongs to the subject as well, appears as independent and separate in this way, namely, that the subject


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 the manifestation of the divine consciously as its own work.

It is self-consciousness which grasps, interprets, gives form to what was, to begin with, abstract, whether it is inward or outward, and produces it in the form in which it is held to be God.

The manifestations in Nature or any particular immediate and external element, are not manifestations in the sense that the Essence is only to be regarded as a thought within our minds—as, for instance, when we speak of the forces of Nature and of its outward effects. Here it does not lie in the natural objects themselves, does not lie in the objectivity in them as such that they exist as manifestations of what is inward. As natural objects they exist only for our sense-perception, and for this they are not a manifestation of the universal. Thus it is not, for example, in light as such that thought, the universal, announces its presence. In the case of natural existence we must on the contrary first break through the husk behind which thought, that which is the inward element in things, hides itself.

What is necessary is that the natural, the external, should in itself and in its externality be directly exhibited as abrogated and taken up into something higher, and as being in its own nature manifestation, so that it has only meaning and significance as the outward expression and organ of thought and of the universal. Thought must be for sense-perception, that is, what is revealed is on the one hand the sensuous mode of truth, while on the other hand that which is perceived by the senses is at the same time thought, the universal. It is necessity that has to appear in a divine fashion, i.e., in definite existence as necessity in immediate unity with this concrete existence. This is posited necessity, i.e., definitely existing necessity, which exists as simple reflection into itself.

Imagination is now the organ with which


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 gives outward form to the inwardly abstract or to the external, which is at first something having immediate Being, and posits it as concrete. In this process the natural loses its independence and is reduced to being the outward sign of the indwelling spirit, in such a way that this latter alone is essentially allowed to appear.

The freedom of Spirit here is not yet the infinite freedom of thought; the spiritual essences are not yet in the element of Thought. Did man exercise thought in such a way that pure thought constituted the basis, there would be for him only one God. Just as little, however, does man come upon his essential beings as present immediate natural forms; on the contrary, he brings them forward into existence for idea or figurative thought, and this bringing of them forward as representing the middle stage between pure thought and the immediate perception of Nature, is imagination or fancy.

In this way the gods are formed by human imagination, and they originate in a finite fashion, being produced by the poet, by the muse. They have this finitude essentially in themselves, because so far as the content is concerned they are finite, and in virtue of their individuality have no connection with each other. They are not discovered by the human mind as they are in their essentially existent rational content, but in so far as they are gods. They are made, invented, but are not fictitious. They certainly come forth out of the human imagination in contrast to what actually exists, but they do this as essential forms, and this product of the mind is at the same time recognised as being what is essential.

It is in this sense we are to understand the remark of Herodotus that Homer and Hesiod made their gods for the Greeks. The same might be said of every priest and wise “ancient” who was capable of understanding and explaining the presence in the natural of the divine and of the essentially existing powers.


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 When the Greeks heard the roaring of the sea at the funeral of Achilles, Nestor came forward and explained it as meaning that Thetis was taking part in the mourning. Thus, too, in the case of the pestilence, Calchas says that Apollo had brought it about because he was angry with the Greeks. This interpretation just means that an embodiment is given to natural phenomena, that they get the form of a divine act. What takes place within the mind is similarly explained. According to Homer, for instance, Achilles would like to draw his sword, but he calms himself and restrains his anger. This inward prudence is Pallas, who represses anger. In this interpretation originated those innumerable charming tales and the endless number of Greek myths which we possess.

From whatever side we consider the Greek principle, the sensuous and natural element is seen to force its way into it. The gods as they issue out of necessity are limited, and they have also still traces of the natural element in them, just because they reveal the fact that they have sprung from the struggle with the forces of Nature. The manifestation by which they announce themselves to self-consciousness is still external, and the imagination which gives shape and form to this manifestation does not yet elevate their starting-point into the region of pure thought. We have now to see how this natural moment is wholly transfigured into a beautiful form.

(#.) The beautiful form of the divine powers.—In absolute necessity determinateness is reduced to the unity of immediacy, “it is so.” But this means that the determinateness, the content, is rejected, and the stability and freedom of the feeling which keeps to this sensuous perception consists only in the fact that it abides firmly by the empty “is.” But definitely existing necessity is for immediate perception, and indeed exists for it in its character as natural determinate existence which in its determinateness takes itself back into its simplicity, and


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 actually exhibits in itself this act of withdrawal or taking of itself back. Determinate existence, which is only this process, is in the state of freedom, or, to put it otherwise, determinateness exists as negativity, as reflected into itself, and as sinking itself into simple necessity. This determinateness which relates itself to itself is subjectivity.

For this process of concretely existing necessity the reality is accordingly the spiritual, the human form. This is a sensuous and natural object and thus exists for immediate perception, and it is at the same time simple necessity, simple reference to self, in virtue of being which it plainly announces the presence of thought. In every instance of its contact with reality, of its externalisation, it is directly decomposed, dissolved, and merged in simple identity; it is an externalisation, a manifestation, which is really the externalisation of Spirit.

This relationship is not easily grasped, namely, that the fundamental determination and the one side of the Notion is absolute necessity, while the side of reality in virtue of which the Notion is Idea, is the human form. The Notion must, above all, have actual reality. This determination accordingly is more directly involved in necessity itself, for it is not abstract Being, but what is actual and determinate, determinate in and for itself. Thus the determinateness, just because it is at the same time natural, external, reality, is further directly taken back into simple necessity, so that it is this necessity which exhibits itself in this variegated sensuous element. It is only when it is no longer necessity but Spirit, which constitutes the Divine, that the latter comes to be regarded as existing wholly in the element of thought. Here, however, the moment of external perceptibility still remains, in which, spite of its material character, simple necessity nevertheless exhibits itself. This is only the case when we have the human form, because it is the form of the spiritual, and only in it can reality be taken back for consciousness into the simplicity of necessity.


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 Life generally is this infinitude of free existence, and as what is living is it this subjectivity, which reacts against the immediate determinateness and posits it as identical with itself in feeling. But the life of the animal, that is, the actual existence and externalisation of its infinitude, has plainly a merely limited content, is sunk in merely particular conditions. The simplicity to which this determinateness is taken back is a limited and merely formal one, and the content is not adequate to this its form. For thinking man, on the other hand, the spiritual is expressed in his particular conditions also; this expression of it lets us see that man even in any one limited condition is at the same time above it, transcends it, is free, and does not go outside of himself, continues to be at home with himself. We can very easily judge whether a man in the act of satisfying his wants behaves like an animal or like a man. The human element is a delicate fragrance which spreads itself over every action. Besides, man has not only this element of mere life, but has likewise an infinite range of higher ways of expressing himself, of higher deeds and ends, the constituent element of which is just the Infinite, the Universal. Thus man is that absolute reflection into self which we have in the conception of necessity. It properly belongs to physiology to get a knowledge of the human organism, of the human form as the only form truly adequate for Spirit, but as yet it has accomplished little in this regard. Aristotle long ago expressed the truth that it is only the human organisation which is the form of the spiritual, when he pointed it out as being the defect in the idea of the transmigration of souls, that according to this theory the bodily organisation of human beings was of a merely accidental kind.

The individual actual man still essentially has, however, in his immediate existence the element of immediate natural life, which makes its appearance as something temporary and fleeting, as that which has fallen away


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 from universality. In accordance with this element of finitude, there emerges a discordance or want of harmony between that which man implicitly, in his real nature is, and what he actually is. The impress of simple necessity is not stamped on all the features and parts of the individual man. Empirical individuality and the expression of simple inwardness are mingled together, and the ideality of the natural, freedom and universality are, owing to the conditions of the merely natural life and because of a number of natural needs which come into play, obscured. Looked at from this point of view, from which an “Other” appears in man, the appearance of the outward form does not correspond with simple necessity, but the fact that on his existence in all its shapes and parts the stamp of universality, of simple necessity is impressed—which Goethe appropriately called significance, as representing the essential character of classic art—renders it necessary that the form should be planned only in Spirit, should be produced only out of it, and brought into existence only by its mediation, that it should in short be ideal and a work of art. This is something higher than a natural product. We are, no doubt, in the habit of saying that a natural product is the more excellent, just because it is made by God, while a work of art is made only by man, as if, forsooth, natural objects did not also owe their existence to immediate natural finite things, to seeds, air, water, light; as if the power of God lived only in Nature and not also in what is human, in the realm of the spiritual. If the real truth is that natural products only flourish under the conditions supplied by what for them are external and contingent circumstances, and under their influence, an influence which comes from without, then in the work of art it is the necessity which appears as the inward soul and as the notion of externality. That is to say, necessity does not here mean that objects are necessary in themselves and have necessity as their predicate, but that necessity


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Rh it, and growls. His supper will be completely spoilt."

"Oh, that weary writing!"

"I can do no more, mother, so you must come down and stop him."

"I have no power over him," my mother says, but she rises smiling, and presently she is opening my door.

"In five minutes!" I cry, but when I see that it is she I rise and put my arm round her. "What a full basket!" she says, looking at the wastepaper basket which contains most of my work of the night, and with a dear gesture she lifts up a torn page and kisses it. "Poor thing," she says to it, "and you would have liked so fine to be printed!" and she puts her hand over my desk to prevent my writing more.

"In the last five minutes," I begin, "one can often do more than in the first hour."

"Many a time I've said it in my young days," she says slowly.

"And proved it, too!" cries a voice from the door, the voice of one who was prouder of her even than I; it is true, and yet almost unbelievable, that any one could have been prouder of her than I.

"But those days are gone," my mother says solemnly, "gone to come back no more. You'll put by your work now, man, and have your  Rh

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 is the subject, that which manifests itself in its predicate, in external existence.

If in this process the manifestation belongs to the subjective side, so that God appears as something made by man, still that is merely one moment. For this positing of God, the making of His existence dependent on man, is, on the other hand, mediated by the abrogation of the individual self, and thus it was possible for the Greeks to see their god in the Zeus of Phidias. The artist did not give them in an abstract way something which was his own work, but presented to them the appropriate and peculiar manifestation of the essential, the outward form of actually existing necessity.

The form given to the god is thus the ideal form. Previous to the time of the Greeks there was no true ideality, nor was it possible for it to appear at any subsequent time. The art of the Christian religion is indeed beautiful, but ideality is not its ultimate principle. We cannot get at the element of defect in the Greek gods by saying that they are anthropopathic, a category of finitude under which we may put the immoral element, as, for example, the stories of the amours of Zeus, which may have their origin in older myths based on what is as yet the natural way of looking at things. The main defect is not that there is too much of the anthropopathic in these gods, but that there is too little. The manifestation and the aspect of the definite existence of the divine do not yet advance so far as immediate actuality, in the form of a definite individual, that is, as this definite man. The truest, most proper form is necessarily this, that the absolute Spirit which exists for itself should advance to the point at which it shows itself as individual empirical self-consciousness. This characteristic, consisting thus in advance to the sensuous definite individual, is not yet present here. The form made by man in which the divinity appears has, it is true, a material side, but this has still such pliability that it can be perfectly adapted to the


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 manifested content. It is only when separation in God advances to its ultimate limit and appears as man, as a particular empirical self-consciousness, that this sensuousness, this externality, is, so to speak, set free as sensuousness, that is to say, the conditionateness of externality and its want of suitability to express the Notion actually come to light in the god. Here matter, the sensuous, has not yet this form. On the contrary, it keeps true to its content. As the god, though spiritual, universal power, issues out of Nature, he must have the natural as the element of his embodiment, and it must be made plain that it is just the natural which is the mode of the expression of the divine. The god thus appears in stone, and the material is still held to be adequate to the expression of the god as god. It is only when the god appears and reveals himself as a definite individual that Spirit, the subjective knowledge of Spirit as Spirit, is seen to be the true manifestation of God, and it is not till then that sensuousness is set free, that is to say, it is no longer blended with the god, but shows itself to be inadequate as his form; the sensuousness, the immediate individuality, is nailed to the cross. In this process of inversion, it is also shown, however, that this self-alienation, or self-emptying of God in the human form, is only one side of the divine life, for this self-emptying, this manifestation, is taken back again in the One who then for the first time becomes Spirit for thought and for the Church. This single, existing, actual man is done away with and taken up into something higher, and appears as a moment, as one of the persons of God in God. Thus only is man as a definite individual man truly in God, and thus the manifestation of the divine is absolute, and its element is Spirit itself. The Jewish idea that God essentially exists for thought alone, and the sensuousness of the Greek form of beauty, are equally contained in this form of the divine, and as being taken up into something higher, are freed from the limitation attaching to them.


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 At this stage, in which the divine still requires the sensuous for its essential representation, it appears as a multiplicity of gods. In this multiplicity, it is true, necessity presents itself as simple reflection into self, but this simplicity is only form, for the matter in which it exhibits itself is still immediacy, the element of Nature, not the absolute matter, namely, Spirit. It is thus not Spirit as Spirit that is here represented; the truth rather being that the spiritual existence goes ahead of the consciousness of the content, for this latter is not yet itself Spirit.

C.

WORSHIP OR CULTUS.

This is here a very big subject. Worship essentially means that the empirical consciousness elevates itself, and that man gives himself the consciousness and feeling of the indwelling of the divine within him, and of his unity with the divine. If the work of art is the self-revelation of God and the revelation of the productivity of man as the positing of this revelation by the abrogation of his particular knowledge and will, on the other hand, the work of art equally involves the fact that God and man are no longer beings alien to one another, but have been taken up into a higher unity. The positing or bringing out of what is implicit in the work of art is here accordingly worship, and this latter is hence the relationship whereby the external objectivity of God is, relatively to subjective knowledge, abrogated, and the identity of the two set forth. In this way the external divine existence, as something divorced from existence within the subjective spirit, is abrogated, and thus God is, as it were, called to mind within the sphere of subjectivity. The general character of this worship consists in this, that the subject has an essentially affirmative relationship to his god.


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 The moments of worship are as follows: (a.) Inner feeling or subjective attitude. The gods are duly recognised and revered; they are the substantial powers, the essential, real content of the natural and spiritual universe, the Universal. These universal powers, as exempt from contingency, are recognised by man just because he is thinking consciousness. Thus the world no longer exists for him in an external and contingent fashion, but in the true mode. We thus hold in respect duty, justice, knowledge, political life, life in the State, family relationships. They represent what is true, the inner bond which holds the world together, the substantial element in which the rest exists, the valid element, what alone holds its ground against the contingency and independence which act in opposition to it.

This content is the objective in the true sense, i.e., what is absolutely and essentially valid and true, not in the external objective sense, but within subjectivity also. The substance of these powers is the moral element peculiar to men, their morality, their actual and valid power, their own substantiality and essentiality. The Greek people are hence the most human people; with them everything human is affirmatively justified and developed, and the element of measure is present in it.

This religion is essentially a religion of humanity, that is, the concrete man, as regards what he actually is, as regards his needs, inclinations, passions, and habits, as regards his moral and political relations, and in reference to all that has value in these and is essential, is in his gods in presence of his own nature. Or, to put it otherwise, his god has within him the very content composed of the noble and the true, which is at the same time that of concrete man. This humanity of the gods is what was defective in the Greek view, but it is at the same time its attractive element. In this religion there is nothing incomprehensible, nothing which cannot be understood; there is no kind of content in the god which


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 is not known to man, or which he does not find and know in himself. The confidence of a man in the gods is at the same time his confidence in himself.

Pallas, who restrained the outbreak of wrath in the case of Achilles, is his own prudence. Athene is the town of Athens, and is also the spirit of this particular Athenian people; not an external spirit or protecting spirit, but the spirit who is living, present, actually alive in the people, a spirit immanent in the individual, and who in her essential nature is represented as Pallas.

The Erinyes are not the Furies represented in an outward way. On the contrary, they are meant to suggest that it is man’s own act and his consciousness which torment and torture him, in so far as he knows this act to be something evil in himself. The Erinys is not only an external Fury who pursues the matricide Orestes, but suggests rather that it is the spirit of matricide which brandishes its torch over him. The Erinyes are the righteous ones, and just because of that they are the well-disposed, the Eumenides. This is not a euphemism, for they really are those who desire justice, and whoever outrages it has the Eumenides within himself. They represent what we call conscience.

In the Œdipus at Colonos, Œdipus says to his son, “The Eumenides of the father will pursue thee.” Eros, love, is in the same way not merely the objective, the god, but is also as power the subjective feeling of man. Anacreon, for instance, describes a combat with Eros. “I also,” he says, “will now love; long ago Eros bade me love, but I would not follow his command. Then Eros attacked me. Armed with breastplate and lance, I withstood him. Eros missed, but after that he forced his way into my heart.” “But,” thus he concludes, “what is the use of bow and arrow? the combat is within me.” In thus recognising the power of the god, and in this reverential attitude, the subject is absolutely within the sphere of his own nature. The gods are his own emotions.


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 The knowledge the subject has of the gods is not a knowledge of them merely as abstractions away beyond the sphere of reality. On the contrary, it is a knowledge which includes the knowledge of the concrete subjectivity of man himself as something essential, for the gods are likewise within him. Here we have not that negative relation, where the relation of the subject to what is above it, even if it is the highest form of relation, is merely the sacrifice, the negation of its consciousness. The powers here are friendly and gracious to men, they dwell in man’s own breast; man gives them reality, and knows their reality to be at the same time his own. The breath of freedom pervades this whole world, and constitutes the fundamental principle for this attitude of mind.

But the consciousness of the infinite subjectivity of man is still wanting, the consciousness that moral relations and absolute right attach to man as such, that man, just because he is self-consciousness, possesses in this formal infinitude the rights as well as the duties of the human race. Freedom, morality, is the substantial element in man, and to know this as the substantial element, and to posit in it his own substantiality, is what constitutes the value and the dignity of man. But it is the formal subjectivity, self-consciousness as such, the inherently infinite individuality, and not the merely natural and immediate individuality, which contains the possibility of that value, i.e., the real possibility, and the one on account of which the individual himself has infinite rights. Now, because in the natural morality of the untutored man the infinitude of formal subjectivity is not recognised, man as such does not attain to that absolute value according to which he has worth in and for himself, whatever be his inward qualifications, whether born in this or the other place, whether rich or poor, whether belonging to this people or to that. Freedom and morality have still a special, particular form, and the essential right of man is still


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 affected by what is contingent, so that it is essentially at this stage that slavery is found to exist. It is still a matter of accident whether a man is a citizen of this particular State or not, whether he is free or is not free. And because, further, the infinite opposition is not yet present, and because the absolute reflection of self-consciousness into itself, that climax of subjectivity, is still wanting, morality as individual conviction and rational insight is not yet developed.

Nevertheless, in morality, individuality is in a general sense taken up into universal substantiality, and thus there here enters in—if at first only as a faint semblance, and not yet as the absolute demand of Spirit—the idea of the eternal nature of the subjective, individual spirit, the idea of immortality. The demand for the immortality of the soul could not make its appearance at any of the earlier stages already considered, either in the religion of Nature or in the religion of the One. In the former, the immediate unity of the spiritual and the natural is the fundamental idea, and Spirit is not yet self-conscious, or for itself. In the latter, Spirit is, it is true, self-conscious and exists for itself, but it is still unrealised; its freedom is still abstract, and its Being is still a natural form of existence, the possession of a particular land and its welfare. But that is not Being as the determinate existence of Spirit within itself; it does not yet imply full satisfaction in the spiritual. The duration is only the duration of the race, of the family, of natural universality, in short. But here self-consciousness is complete and realised in itself; it is spiritual. Subjectivity is taken up into universal essentiality and is thus known as essentially Idea; and here we meet with the conception of immortality. But this consciousness becomes more definite when morality appears on the scene; self-consciousness goes down into itself, and hence it will recognise that only as good, true, and right which it finds to be in harmony with itself and its thought. With Socrates and Plato accordingly


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 the question of the immortality of the soul is the one expressly raised, while before their day this idea was considered more as a merely general one, and as one which had not absolute value in and for itself.

As infinite subjectivity, the absolute point of the unity of the Notion, is still wanting to self-consciousness, it is still wanting also to its essentialities, to what represents for it real existence. This unity is found within that which we have come to know as its necessity; but this lies outside the circle of the particular, substantial, essential beings. The particular essential beings, like man as such, have no absolute justification, for any justification they have they possess only as a moment of necessity, and as rooted in this absolute unity which is reflected into itself. They are many, though of divine nature, and this their scattered and manifold character is at the same time a limitation, so that divine nature is not attributed to them in any really serious sense. Above the many substantial essential beings there floats the ultimate unity of absolute form—necessity, and self-consciousness, which is in relation to the gods, is at the same time freed by this necessity from them, so that their divinity is at one time taken in a serious sense and at another in an opposite sense.

This religion has, speaking generally, the character of absolute joyousness; self-consciousness is free in relation to its essential beings, because they are its own, though at the same time it is not chained to them, since absolute necessity floats above them too, and they go back into it, just as consciousness with its particular ends and needs also sinks itself in it.

The feeling accordingly of subjective self-consciousness in relation to necessity is this sense of repose which abides in the region of calm, in this freedom, which is, however, still an abstract freedom. It is so far an escape, a flight, but it is at the same time freedom, inasmuch as man is not overcome, weighed down by outward misfortune.


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 Whoever has this consciousness of independence may be indeed outwardly worsted, but he is not conquered or overcome.

Necessity has its own sphere; it has reference only to the particular element of individuality in so far as a collision of spiritual powers is possible, and the individuals are affected by necessity and are brought into subjection to it. Those individuals are in a special way in subjection to necessity and have a tragic interest attaching to them, who raise themselves above the ordinary moral conditions, and who seek to accomplish something special for themselves. This is the case with the heroes who through their own acts of will are separated from others; they have interests which go beyond the ordinary peaceful circumstances in which the government and action of God proceed. They are those who will and act in a special way of their own; they stand above the Chorus, above the calm, steady, harmonious, ordinary moral course of life. This last is exempt from the influence of destiny, restricts itself to the ordinary sphere of life, and rouses none of the moral powers against it. The Chorus, the people, viewed in one aspect, has its particular side too; it is subject to the common lot of mortals, namely, to die, to suffer misfortune and such-like, but an issue of this kind is the common lot of mortal men, and represents the course of justice relatively to the finite. That the individual should suffer some accidental misfortune, that he should die, is something which belongs to the order of things.

In Homer, Achilles weeps over his early death, and his horse weeps over it too. That would be regarded in our day as a silly thing for a poet to mention. But Homer could attribute to his hero this foreknowledge, for it cannot alter anything in his life and actions; it simply is so for him, and otherwise he is what he is. The thought can indeed make him sad, but only momentarily; things are so, but this disturbs him no further;


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 he may indeed be sad, but he cannot be vexed or annoyed. Vexation is the sentiment of the modern world; the feeling of vexation or annoyance presupposes an end, a demand on the part of modern freewill, which considers itself warranted and justified in indulging this feeling if any such end should not be realised. Thus the modern man easily gets into the mood in which he loses heart with regard to everything else, and does not even seek to reach other things he might quite well have made his aim if otherwise unsuccessful All else that belongs to his nature and destiny he abandons, and in order to revenge himself destroys his own courage, his power of action, all those ends of destiny to which he might otherwise have quite well attained. This is vexation; it could not possibly have formed part of the character of the Greeks or of the ancients, the truth being that their grief regarding what is necessary is of a purely simple kind. The Greeks did not set before themselves any end as absolute, as essential, any end the attainment of which ought to be warranted; their grief is therefore a grief of resignation. It is simple sorrow, simple grief, which has for this reason the element of serenity in it. No absolute end is lost for the individual; here, too, he continues to be at home with himself, he can renounce that which is not realised. It is so; and this means that he has withdrawn himself into abstraction, and has not set his own Being in opposition to what is. The liberation here is the identity of the subjective will with that which is; the subject is free, but only in an abstract fashion.

The heroes, as was remarked, bring about an alteration in the course of simple necessity, in this way, namely, that an element of division comes in, and the higher, really interesting element of division, so far as Spirit is concerned, is that it is the moral powers themselves which appear as divided and as coming into collision.

The removal of this state of collision consists in this, that the moral powers which are in collision, in virtue


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 of their one-sidedness, divest themselves of the one-sidedness attaching to the assertion of independent validity, and this discarding of the one-sidedness reveals itself outwardly in the fact that the individuals who have aimed at the realisation in themselves of a single separate moral power, perish.

Fate is what is devoid of thought, of the Notion, something in which justice and injustice disappear in abstraction; in tragedy, on the other hand, destiny moves within a certain sphere of moral justice. We find this truth expressed in the noblest form in the Tragedies of Sophocles. Fate and necessity are both referred to there. The destiny of individuals is represented as something incomprehensible, but necessity is not a blind justice; on the contrary, it is recognised as the true justice. And just because of this these Tragedies are the immortal spiritual productions of moral understanding and comprehension, the eternal patterns or models of the moral Notion. Blind destiny is something unsatisfying. In these Tragedies justice is grasped by thought. The collision between the two highest moral powers is set forth in a plastic fashion in that supreme and absolute example of tragedy, Antigone. In this case, family love, what is holy, what belongs to the inner life and to inner feeling, and which because of this is also called the law of the nether gods, comes into collision with the law of the State. Creon is not a tyrant, but really a moral power; Creon is not in the wrong; he maintains that the law of the State, the authority of government, is to be held in respect, and that punishment follows the infraction of the law. Each of these two sides realises only one of the moral powers, and has only one of these as its content; this is the element of one-sidedness here, and the meaning of eternal justice is shown in this, that both end in injustice just because they are one-sided, though at the same time both obtain justice too. Both are recognised as having a value of their own in the untroubled course of morality.


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 Here they both have their own validity, but a validity which is equalised. It is only the one-sidedness in their claims which justice comes forward to oppose.

We have another example of collision in the case of Œdipus, for instance. He has slain his father, is apparently guilty, but guilty because his moral power is one-sided; that is to say, he falls into the commission of his horrible deed unconsciously. He, however, is the man who has solved the riddle of the Sphinx; he is the man distinguished for knowledge, and so a kind of balance is introduced in the shape of a Nemesis. He, who is so gifted in knowledge, is in the power of what is unconscious, so that he falls into a guilt which is deep in proportion to the height on which he stood. Here, therefore, we have the opposition of the two powers, that of consciousness and unconsciousness.

To mention still another case of collision. Hippolytus becomes unfortunate because he pays honour to Diana only, and despises Love, which accordingly revenges itself on him. It is an absurdity to ascribe to Hippolytus another amour, as is done in the French version of the story by Racine, for in that case what he suffers is no punishment of Love with any pathos in it, but is merely a certain misfortune arising from the fact that he is enamoured of one maiden, and gives no heed to another woman; for though the latter is indeed his father’s wife, still the moral hindrance implied in this is obscured by the love he has for Aricia. The real cause of his destruction is the injury he has done by his neglect of a universal Power as such; it is nothing moral, but is, on the contrary, something particular and accidental.

The conclusion of this Tragedy is reconciliation, rational necessity, the necessity which here begins to mediate itself; it is justice which is in this way satisfied with the maxim, “There is nothing which is not Zeus,” that is, eternal justice. Here there is an active necessity, but it is one which is completely moral; the


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 misfortune endured is perfectly clear; here there is nothing blind and unconscious. To such clearness of insight and of artistic presentation did Greece attain at her highest stage of culture. Yet there remains here something unsolved in that the higher element does not appear as the infinitely spiritual power; we still have here an unsatisfied sorrow arising from the fact that an individual perishes.

The higher form of reconciliation would be that the attitude of one-sidedness should be done away with in the Subject, that the subject should have the consciousness of his wrong-doing, and that he should in his own heart put away his wrong-doing. To recognise this his guilt, his one-sidedness, and to discard them, is not, however, natural to this sphere of thought. This higher point of view makes the outward punishment, namely, natural death, superfluous. Beginnings, faint echoes of this reconciliation, do undoubtedly make their appearance here, but nevertheless this inward change or conversion appears more as outward purification. A son of Minos was slain in Athens, and its purification was thus rendered necessary. This deed was declared to be undone. It is Spirit which seeks to render what has been done undone.

In the Eumenides Orestes is acquitted by the Areopagus; here we have, on the one hand, the greatest possible crime against filial piety, while on the other we see that he did justice to his father, for he was not only head of the family, but also of the State. In one action he both committed a crime and at the same time acted in accordance with perfect and essential necessity. Acquittal just means that something is made undone, made as though it had not happened.

In the case of Œdipus Coloneus reconciliation is hinted at, and more particularly the Christian idea of reconciliation. He is taken into favour by the gods, the gods call him to themselves. In the present day we


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 demand more, since with us the idea of reconciliation is of a higher kind, and because we are conscious that this conversion can occur in the inner life, whereby that which is done can be rendered undone.

The man who is “converted” gives up his one-sidedness; he has extirpated it himself in his will, which was the permanent seat of the deed, the place of its abode; that is, he destroys the act in its root. It is congenial to our way of feeling that tragedies should have conclusions which have in them the element of reconciliation.

(b.) Worship as Service.—If the real point accordingly is that subjectivity should consciously pronounce its identity with the divine which confronts it, then both parts must give up something of their determinateness. God comes down from his throne of the universe and delivers Himself up, and man must, in the act of receiving the gift, accomplish the negation of subjective self-consciousness—that is, he must acknowledge God or take the gift with an acknowledgment of the essentiality which is in it. The service of God is consequently a reciprocal giving and receiving. Each side gives up something of the particularity which separates it from the other.

I. The outward relation of the two sides to one another in its most extreme form is that God has in Himself a natural element, and exists independently relatively to self-consciousness in an immediate definite fashion; or, to put it otherwise, God has His existence in an external, natural manifestation. In this relation the service of God is on the one side an acknowledgment that natural things are an Essence in themselves. On the other side, the deity offers itself up, sacrifices itself in the power of Nature in which it appears, and allows itself to be taken possession of by self-consciousness.

If then the divine powers give themselves up as gifts of Nature and graciously offer themselves for use, the


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 service in which man comes to have a consciousness of unity with his powers has the following signification:—

As for those fruits, those springs, which exist in Nature, they allow themselves to be used and drawn upon without hindrance, or to be laid hold of and used as nourishment. These gifts fall freely into the lap of man; man eats the gifts, drinks the wine, and gets from them invigoration and stimulus, and this invigoration in which they are an element, is their work, the effect they produce. In this relationship it is not a case of mere reciprocal action, the melancholy, continuous, self-producing uniformity of what is mechanical. On the contrary, these gifts are rendered honourable because man eats them and drinks of them; for to what higher honour can natural things attain than to appear as the inspiring force of spiritual action? Wine inspires, but it is man who first exalts it to the rank of an inspiring and power-giving agent. So far the relationship of bare need disappears. In connection with the sense of need man gives thanks to the gods for the receiving of the gifts, and these needs presuppose a separation which it is not in the power of man to do away with. Need, strictly so called, first makes its appearance owing to property and the retention of something by one will, but man does not stand in such a relation of need to the gifts of Nature; on the contrary, they have to thank him that they come to be something, that anything is made of them; without him they would rot and dry up and pass away in uselessness.

The sacrifice which is connected with the enjoyment of these natural gifts has not here the sense of the offering up of what is inward or of the concrete fulness of Spirit; on the contrary, it is just this very fulness which is affirmed and enjoyed. Sacrifice in this case can only signify that acknowledgment of the universal Power which expresses the theoretical giving up of a part of what is to be enjoyed, i.e., the acknowledgment