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 here is a useless and aimless kind of giving up, a renunciation which is not practical and has not reference to the self; as, for example, the pouring out of a bowl of wine. The sacrifice is itself at the same time the enjoyment of the thing; the wine is drunk, the meat is eaten, and it is the power of Nature itself whose individual existence and external form are offered up and destroyed. Eating means sacrifice, and sacrifice just means eating.

Thus this higher sense of sacrifice and the enjoyment found in it attach themselves to all the actions of life; every occupation, every enjoyment of daily life is a sacrifice. Worship is not renunciation, not the offering up of a possession, of something belonging to oneself, but is rather idealised, theoretical and artistic enjoyment. Freedom and spirituality are spread over the entire daily and immediate life of man, and worship is in short a continuous poetry of life.

The worship of these gods is accordingly not to be called service in the proper sense of the word, as something having reference to a foreign independent will from whose chance decision is to be obtained what is desired. On the contrary, the act of adoration itself already implies a previous granting of something, or, in other words, it is itself enjoyment. It is, therefore, not a question of calling a power back to oneself from its place beyond what is here and now, nor of renouncing what, on the subjective side of self-consciousness, constitutes the separation, in order that man may be receptive of the power. It is thus not a question of deprivation or renunciation, or of the laying aside of something subjective belonging to the individual, nor does the idea of anguish, of self-tormenting, of self-torture come in here. The worship of Bacchus or of Ceres is the possession, the enjoyment of bread and wine, the consumption of these, and is therefore itself the immediate granting of these things. The Muse to which Homer appeals is in the same way his genius, and so on.


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 The universal powers, however, in this case certainly retire farther into the background again, so far as the individual is concerned. The spring allows itself to be drawn upon unhindered, and the sea allows itself to be freely frequented, but it also rises in storm; it and the stars are not only not serviceable to man, but inspire fear, and are a source of disaster. Nor is the Muse always gracious to the poet either; she goes away and serves him badly, though, properly speaking, the poet really appeals to her only when he is composing his poem, and the appeal to and praise of the Muse is itself Poetry. Even Athene—Spirit, God—is unfaithful to herself. The Tyrians bound their Hercules with chains, so that he should not desert their city, which represented his reality and actual real existence; and yet Tyre fell. But such estrangement on the part of men from their essentiality or embodiment of essential Being does not lead to absolute division, not to that inward laceration of heart which would compel men to draw down their deity, so to speak, by the force of spirit to themselves in worship, and with which the lapse into magic would be connected. The individual cannot go on living in endless opposition to these particular powers, because as particular ends they lose themselves in necessity, and are themselves surrendered in this necessity.

Service hence consists in the fact that the universal powers are given a place of honour on their own account and are duly acknowledged. Thought grasps the essential, substantial element of its concrete life, and hence is neither sunk in a state of torpor in the empirical details of life and dissipated amongst these, nor does it turn from these merely to the abstract One, to the infinite “Beyond.” On the contrary, just because Spirit sets before itself the true element, the Idea of its manifold existence, it is, in the very act of acknowledging and doing reverence to this universal, in the state of enjoyment, and remains in the presence of its own nature.

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 This presence of Spirit in its essentialities is on the one hand its truly valuable, thinking, theoretic relationship, and on the other hand is that happiness, joyousness, and freedom which is securely conscious of itself in this state, and is here in presence of its self, or together with its own self.

2. Service as a certain relationship to the gods on their spiritual side does not mean either that man appropriates these powers for the first time, or that man for the first time becomes conscious of his identity with them. For this identity is already present, and man finds these powers already realised in his consciousness. The spiritual in a definite form, as right, morality, law, or in the form of universal essential beings, such as Love, Aphrodite, attains actual existence in individuals, moral individuals, who know and love. They are the will, the inclination, the passion of these individuals themselves, their own willing, active, life. Consequently what is left for worship to do is merely to acknowledge these powers, to revere them, and together with this, to raise the identity into the form of consciousness, and to make it into theoretic objectivity.

If we compare this objectivity with our idea, we at the same time lift the universal out of our immediate consciousness and think it. We can also go on to raise these universal powers into the sphere of the ideal and give them spiritual form. But when it comes to offering prayer or bringing sacrifices to such creations, we reach the point at which we abandon the material view referred to. We cannot go so far as to give those images, which yet are no mere fancies but real powers, individual separate independence and ascribe personality to them as over against ourselves. Our consciousness of infinite subjectivity as something universal absorbs those particular powers and reduces them to the level of beautiful pictures of fancy, whose substance and significance we are indeed able to appreciate, but which cannot be held by us to have true independence.


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 In Greek life, however, poetry, the thinking imagination, is itself the essential Service of God. Viewed from one side, these powers split up ad infinitum, and, although they constitute an exclusive circle, just because they are particular powers they themselves come almost to have the infinitude of the qualities belonging to them when they are thought of as actually existing. What a number of particular relations are comprised in Pallas, for instance! Viewed from the other side, again, we see that it is the human, sensuous-spiritual form in which the ideal is to be represented, and as a consequence of all this, this representation is inexhaustible, and must ever continue to go on and renew itself, for the religious sense is itself this continuous transition from empirical existence to the ideal. There is here no fixed, spiritually definite doctrinal system, no doctrine; we have not truth as such in the form of thought; on the contrary, we see the divine in this immanent connection with reality, and hence always raising itself up anew and producing itself in and out of this reality. If this active production is brought to perfection by art, imagination has reached its ultimate fixed form, so that the ideal is set up, and then we find that there is a close connection between this and the decay of religious life.

So long, however, as the productive force which characterises this standpoint is fresh and active, the highest form of the assimilation of the divine consists in this, that the subject makes the god present through himself, and makes the god manifest in his own self. Because in this connection the recognised subjectivity of the god at the same time remains on one side as a “Beyond,” this representation of the divine is at the same time the acknowledgment and the adoration of his own substantial essentiality. Thus accordingly the divine is revered and acknowledged when it is represented in festivals, games, plays, songs—in art, in short. For any one is honoured in so far as a lofty idea is formed of him, and in so far


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 too as this idea is made visible through action and is allowed to appear outwardly in his conduct.

Now since the nation in the productions of art, in the honour paid in songs and festivals, allows the idea of the divine to appear in itself, it has its worship in itself, i.e., it directly shows what is really its own excellence; it shows the best it has, that which it has been capable of making itself. Men adorn themselves; pageantry, dress, adornment, dance, song, battle—all are connected with the desire to show honour to the gods. Man shows his spiritual and bodily ability and skill, his riches; he exhibits himself in all the glory of God, and thus enjoys the manifestation of God in the individual himself. This characterises festivals even yet. This general description may suffice to show that man allows the idea of the gods to appear to him through himself, and that he represents himself in the most splendid possible way, and thus shows his reverential recognition of the gods. High honour was ascribed to the victors in battle; they were the most honoured of the nation; on festive occasions they sat beside the Archons, and it even happened that in their lifetime they were revered as gods, inasmuch as they had given outward manifestation to the divine in themselves through the skill which they had shown. In this way individuals make the divine manifest in themselves. In practice individuals honour the gods, are moral—that which is the will of the gods is what is moral—and thus they bring the divine into the sphere of actual reality. The people of Athens, for example, who held a procession at the festival of Pallas, represented the presence of Athene, the spirit of the people, and this people is the living spirit which represents and exhibits in itself all the skill of Athene and all that is done by her.

3. But man may be ever so certain of his immediate identity with the essential powers, and may thoroughly appropriate divinity to himself and rejoice in its presence


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 in him, and in the presence of himself in it; he may continue to absorb those natural gods, and represent the moral gods in morality and in the life of the State, or he may in practice live a godly life and bring into view the outward embodiment and manifestation of divinity in festivals in his own subjectivity; still there yet remains for consciousness a “Beyond,” that is to say, the entire particular element in action and in the circumstances and relations of the individual, and the connection of these relations with God. Our belief that Providence in its action reaches even to the individual, finds its confirmation in the fact that God has become man, and this in the actual and temporal mode within which consequently all particular individuality is comprehended, for it is owing to this that subjectivity has received the absolute moral justification by which it is subjectivity of the infinite self-consciousness. In the beautiful form given to the gods, in the images, stories, and local representations connected with them, the element of infinite individuality, of particularity in its most extreme form, is doubtless directly contained and expressed, still it is a particularity which in one aspect of it is one of the chief defects charged against the mythology of Homer and Hesiod, while in another aspect these stories belong so specially to the gods represented that they have no reference to other gods or to men, just as amongst men each individual has his own particular experiences, doings, circumstances, and history, which belong wholly and entirely to his particular life. The moment of subjectivity does not appear as infinite subjectivity, it is not Spirit as such which is contemplated in the objective forms given to the divine; and wisdom is what must constitute the fundamental characteristic of the divine. This, as working in accordance with ends, must be comprised within one infinite wisdom, within one subjectivity. The truth that human things are ruled over by the gods is thus no doubt involved in that


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Rh per, and then you'll come up and sit beside your mother for a whiley, for soon you'll be putting her away in the kirk-yard."

I hear such a little cry from near the door.

So my mother and I go up the stair together.

"We have changed places," she says; "that was just how I used to help you up, but I'm the bairn now."

She brings out the Testament again; it was always lying within reach; it is the lock of hair she left me when she died. And when she has read for a long time she "gives me a look," as we say in the north, and I go out, to leave her alone with God. She had been but a child when her mother died, and so she fell early into the way of saying her prayers with no earthly listener. Often and often I have found her on her knees, but I always went softly away, closing the door. I never heard her pray, but I know very well how she prayed, and that, when that door was shut, there was not a day in God's sight between the worn woman and the little child. Rh

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 religion, but in an indeterminate, general sense, for it is just the gods who are the ruling powers in all that concerns man. The gods too are certainly just, but justice, so far as it is one Power, is a titanic power and pertains to the ancient gods. The beautiful gods have a valid existence of their own in their particular forms and come to be in collision, and these collisions are only settled by equal honour being given to all—a method, however, which certainly gives no immanent settlement.

From gods such as these, in whom the absolute return into self has not made its appearance, the individual could not look for absolute wisdom and ordered design in connection with what happened to him in life. Man, however, still feels the need of having above his particular acts and particular lot, an objective determining principle. He does not possess this in the thought of divine wisdom and Providence so as to be able to trust it in general, and for the rest to depend upon his own formal knowledge and will, and to await the absolute and entire consummation of these, or else to seek some compensation for the loss and failure of his particular interests and ends, or for his misfortune, in an eternal end.

When the particular interests of man, his happiness or misery, are concerned, we find that this outward element in what happens still depends on whether a man does this or that, goes to this or that other place. This is his act, his decision, which he, however, in turn knows to be contingent. As regards the circumstances which I actually know, I can doubtless decide one way or other. But besides these thus known to me, others may exist through which the realisation of my end is completely defeated. In connection with these actions I am thus in the world of contingency. Within this sphere knowledge is accordingly contingent; it has no relation to what is ethical, and truly substantial, to the duties to country, the State, and so on; man cannot, however, get to know this contingent element. The decision


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 cannot so far have anything fixed about it, nor be in any way grounded in the nature of things, but in deciding I know at the same time that I am dependent on what is other than myself, on what is unknown. Now, since neither in the divine nor in the individual is the moment of infinite subjectivity present, it does not fall to the individual to take the final decision of himself, to perform of himself the final act of will, for instance, to give battle to-day, to marry, to travel; for the man is conscious that objectivity does not reside in this willing of his, and that it is formal merely. To satisfy the longing for this completion and to add on this objectivity, a direction from without is required coming from one higher than the individual, that is, the direction of an external, decisive, and definite sign. It is the inner free will which, that it may not be mere free will, makes itself objective, i.e., makes itself inalienably into what is other than itself and accepts the external free will as higher than itself. It is, speaking generally, some power of Nature, a natural phenomenon, which now decides. The man, amazed at what he sees, finds in such a natural phenomenon something relative to himself, because he does not yet see in it any objective essential significance, or, to put it otherwise, he does not see in Nature an inherently perfect system of laws. The formal rational element, the feeling and the belief in the identity of the inward and outward, lies at the basis of his conception, but the inward element of Nature, or the universal to which it stands related, is not the connection of its laws; on the contrary, it is a human end, a human interest.

When, accordingly, any one wills anything, he demands, in order actually to take his resolution, an external objective confirmation or assurance; he asks that he should know his resolution to be one which is a unity of the subjective and objective, one which is assured and ratified. And here this ratification is the unexpected, something which happens suddenly, a materially significant,


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 unconnected change in things, a flash in a clear sky, a bird rising up in a wide uniform horizon, and which breaks in upon the indeterminateness of the inner irresolution. This is an appeal to what is inward, an appeal to act suddenly, and to come to a determination within the mind in a chance way without a knowledge of the connection and grounds, for this is just the point at which the grounds or reasons stop short, or at which they are in fact absent.

The outward phenomenon which is nearest at hand for the accomplishment of the end in view, namely, the finding out of what is to determine action, is a sound, a noise, a voice, ὄμφη, whence Delphi has got the name ὄμφαλος, a supposition which is certainly more correct than that which would find in it the other meaning of the word, namely, the navel of the earth. In Dodona there were three kinds of sounds—the sound produced by the movement of the leaves in the sacred oak, the murmuring of a spring, and the sound coming from a brazen vessel struck by rods of brass moved by the wind. At Delos the laurel rustled; at Delphi the wind which blew on the brazen tripod was the principal element. It was not till later on that the Pythia had to be stupefied by vapours, when in her raving she emitted words without any connection, and which had first to be explained by the priest. It was the priest, too, who interpreted dreams. In the cave of Trophonius the inquirer saw visions, and these were interpreted to him. In Achaia, as Pausanias relates, there was a statue of Mars, and the question was spoken into its ear, after which the questioner went away from the market with his fingers in his ears. The first word heard by him after his ears were opened was the answer, which was then connected with the question by interpretation. To the same class of signs belong also the questioning of the entrails of sacrificial animals, the signification of the flight of birds, and several other such purely external rites. Animals were slaughtered in


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 till auspicious tokens were got. In the case of the oracles, two things went to constitute the verdict—the outward word and the explanation. With regard to the former, the mind took up a receptive attitude, but with regard to the latter, its attitude, as being the interpreter, was an active one, for the outward element in itself was supposed to be indeterminate. (Αἱ τῶν δαιμόνων φωναὶ ἄναρθροὶ εἰσιν) But even as representing the concrete expression of the decision of the god, the oracles have a double meaning. Man acts in accordance with them while taking the words in one of their aspects. The other meaning, however, appears in opposition to the first, and so man comes into collision with the oracle. The oracles just mean that man shows himself to be ignorant, and shows that the god has knowledge; as ignorant, man accepts the utterance of the god who has knowledge. He consequently does not represent the knowledge of something revealed, but the absence of the knowledge of this. He does not act with knowledge in accordance with the revelation of the god, which, as being general, has no inherent determinate meaning, and thus, where there is a possibility of two meanings, it must be ambiguous. The oracle says, “Depart, and the enemy will be conquered.” Here both enemies are “the enemy.” The revelation of the divine is general, and must be general; man interprets it as one who is ignorant, he acts in accordance with it. The action is his own, and thus he knows himself to be responsible. The flight of birds, the rustling of oaks, are general signs. To the definite question, the god, as representing the divine in general, gives a general answer, for it is only what is general, and not the individual as such, that is included in the end aimed at by the gods. The general is, however, indeterminate, ambiguous, capable of a double meaning, for it comprises both sides.

(c.) What came first in worship was religious sentiment; then, secondly, we had worship as service, the concrete relationship, where, however, negativity as such


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 has not yet appeared. The third form of the service of God is the divine service of reconciliation. The gods must be realised in the soul, in the subject, which is hypothetically estranged, i.e., negatively determined relatively to the divine, and in opposition to it. The agreement cannot take place in the immediate way characteristic of the foregoing form; on the contrary, it demands a mediation in which that must be sacrificed which was formerly held to be fixed and independent. This negative element, which must be yielded up in order that the estrangement and alienation of the two sides may be removed, is of a twofold kind. In the first place, the soul, in its character as the natural or untutored soul, is negative relatively to Spirit; the second negative element is accordingly the positive-negative element, so to speak, that is, any misfortune whatever, and more definitely, in the third place, a moral misfortune or crime, the extreme alienation of the subjective self-consciousness relatively to the divine.

I. The soul in its natural state is not as it should be; it ought to be free Spirit, but the soul is Spirit only through the abrogation of the natural will, of the desires. This abrogation, this subjection of itself to what is moral, and the habituation to this so that the moral or spiritual becomes the second nature of the individual, is, above all, the work of education and culture. The thought of this reconstruction of man’s nature must accordingly come into consciousness at this standpoint, because it is the standpoint of self-conscious freedom, and come into it in such a way as to show that this change or conversion is recognised as requisite. If this training and conversion are represented as essential moments, and as essentially living, we get the idea of a road which the soul has to traverse, and as a consequence we get the idea of some outward arrangement in which it is supplied with the pictorial representation of this road. But if the course followed by this conversion, this self-negation and dying


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 to self, is to be set forth for perception or pictorial contemplation as absolute and essential, it must be beheld in the divine objects themselves. The need for this has, as a matter of fact, been obviated by means of a process which, in the pictorial representation of the world of the gods, has been carried out in the following way.

It is a fact intimately connected with the adoration of the many divinities,—which, however, just because they are many are limited divine beings,—that there is also a transition to the universality of the divine power. The limited character of the gods itself leads directly to the idea of a transcendence, a rising above them, and to the attempt to unite them in one concrete picture, and not merely in abstract necessity, for the latter is not anything objective. As yet this transcendence cannot here be the absolute inherently concrete subjectivity as Spirit, but neither can it be the return to the pictorial representation or perception of the power of the One and to the negative service of the Lord. On the contrary, the One which is the object for self-consciousness at this standpoint is a unity which is in a concrete fashion all-embracing; it is universal Nature as a whole, or, a totality of gods, the content of the sensuous-spiritual world united in a material fashion. Inasmuch as self-consciousness cannot advance to infinite subjectivity, which as Spirit would be inherently concrete, the perception or picturing of substantial unity is something already present so far as this stage is concerned and preserved from the older religions. For the older original religions are the definite nature-religions, in which this Spinozism, namely, the immediate unity of the spiritual and the natural, constitutes the foundation. But further, the older form of religion, however much it may be locally defined and limited in its outward representation and in the mode in which it is conceived of, is, before it reaches its developed form, still inherently indefinite and general. Each local god in its


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 of locality has at the same time the significance of universality, and since this is firmly clung to as against the splitting up and particularisation into characters and individualities developed in the Religion of Beauty, it is in what is rude and primitive, in what is unbeautiful and uncultured, that the service of a deeper, inner universal, maintains itself, a universal which is at the same time not abstract thought, but which, on the contrary, retains in itself that external and contingent form.

This older religion may, on account of its simplicity and substantial intensity, be called deeper, purer, stronger, more substantial, and its meaning may be termed a truer one, but its meaning is essentially enveloped in a kind of haze, and is not developed into thought, that is, is not developed into that clearness which marks the particular gods in whom the day of Spirit has dawned, and which have in consequence attained to character and spiritual form. The service of this deeper and universal element involves, however, in it, the opposition of this deeper and universal element itself to the particular, limited, and revealed powers. It is, regarded from one side, a return from these to what is deeper, more inward, and so far higher, the bringing back of the many scattered gods into the unity of Nature, but it also involves the antithesis which is expressed by saying that this deeper element is as opposed to clear self-consciousness, to the serenity of day and rationality, something dull and torpid, unconscious, crude, and barbarous. The perception, or pictorial contemplation, in this kind of worship, is accordingly in one aspect the perception of the universal life of Nature and of natural force, a return to inward substantiality; but in another aspect it is equally the perception of the process, of the transition from savagery to a state of law, from barbarousness to morality, from mental torpor to the clear growing certainty of self-consciousness, from the Titanic to the Spiritual. It is consequently not a god in his finished form who is beheld here, no abstract


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 doctrine is propounded; on the contrary, the content of perception is the conflict of what is original and primitive, which is brought forth from its undeveloped state into clearness, into form, into the daylight of consciousness. This idea is already present in many exoteric and pictorial forms in mythology. The war of the gods and the conquests of the Titans is just this divine issuing forth of the spiritual from the overcoming of the rude powers of Nature.

It is here accordingly that the action of the subjective side and its movement receive their deeper determination. Worship cannot here be merely serene enjoyment, the enjoyment of present immediate unity with the particular powers; for since the divine passes out of its particularity over to universality, and since self-consciousness is reversed or inverted within itself, opposition is consequently present, and the union starts from a separation greater than that presupposed by outward worship. Worship here is rather the movement of an inward impression made on the soul, an introduction to and initiation into an essentiality which is for it foreign and abstract, an entrance into disclosures which its ordinary life and the worship grounded on that do not contain. Just because the soul enters into this sphere the demand is made that it should give up its natural Being and essence. This worship is thus at the same time the purification of the soul, a path to this purification, and a gradual progress towards it, the admission into the high mystical Essence, and the attainment of a contemplation in pictorial form of its secrets, which, however, have for the initiated ceased to be secrets, and can only still remain such in the sense that the pictures thus contemplated, and this content, are not introduced into the sphere of ordinary existence and consciousness, that is, into the sphere of ordinary action and reflection. All Athenian citizens were initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. A secret is thus essentially something known,


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 only not by all. Here, however, there is something known by all, which is merely treated as secret, i.e., secret only to this extent, that it is not made the talk of everyday life, just as we see in the case of Jews, who do not name the name Jehovah, or, to take an opposite case, just as in daily life there are things known to all but of which no one speaks. But these pictures of the divine were not mystical in the sense in which the public doctrines of Christendom have been called mysteries. For in the case of the latter the mystical element is the inward and speculative element. What had been seen by the initiated had to remain secret, mainly because the Greeks would not have been able to speak of it otherwise than in myths, that is to say, not without altering what was old. But even in this worship, although it starts from a definite opposition, joyousness or serenity still continues to constitute the basis. The path of purification is traversed indeed, but that does not represent the infinite pain and doubt in which the abstract self-consciousness isolates itself from itself in its abstract knowledge, and because of this moves and pulsates merely within itself when in this empty abstract form, is merely a kind of inward trembling, and in this abstract certainty of itself cannot absolutely reach fixed truth and objectivity, nor come to have the feeling of these. On the contrary, it is always on the basis of that unity that this traversing of the path exists and has value as the actually completed purification of the soul, as absolution, and having this original unconscious basis remains rather an external process of the soul, since the latter does not go down into the innermost depths of negativity as is the case where subjectivity is completely developed and attains to infinitude. If terrors, frightful images, forms inspiring dread, and such like, are already employed here, and if, on the other hand, and in contrast to this dark side, bright and brilliant representations, significant pictures full of splendour are made use of to produce a deeper effect on the


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"the reputed compiler of four of them, and author of the faith": should that read "author of the fifth"?--Laverock ( Talk ) 17:09, 8 January 2011 (UTC)


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 mind, the initiated is purified in the very process of passing through the experience of seeing these pictorial forms and having these emotions.

These mystical perceptions or pictorial forms accordingly correspond to those pictorial forms of the divine life, the process of which is set forth in tragedy and comedy. The fear, the sympathy, the grief represented in tragedy, all those conditions in which self-consciousness is carried away, and in which it shares, are just what forms that process of purification which accomplishes all that should be accomplished. In the same way the pictorial representations of comedy, and the giving up by Spirit of its dignity, of its value, of its opinion of itself, and even of its fundamental powers, this entire surrender of all that belongs to self, is just this worship in which the spirit, through this surrender of all that is finite, enjoys and retains the indestructible certainty of itself.

In public worship even the main interest is not so much the paying of honour to the gods as the enjoyment of the divine. Since, however, in this worship of mysteries, the soul is on its own account elevated into an end and is regarded in this condition of contrast as abstract, independent, and, as it were, sundered from the divine, the idea of the immortality of the soul necessarily makes its appearance here. The completed purification raises it above the temporal, fleeting, present existence, and inasmuch as it is made permanently free, the idea of the passing over of the individual as one dead on his natural side, into an eternal life, is closely associated with this form of worship. The individual is made a citizen of the essential, ideal kingdom of the under world, in which temporal reality is reduced to the condition of a phantom world.

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. The Greek gods themselves are not symbolical; they are what they represent, just as the conception of a work of art means the giving expression to what is meant, and does not mean that what is inward is something different from what is outwardly seen. Even if the beginnings of the Greek god are to be traced back to some such ancient symbolic representation, still what this is actually made into has become the work of art which perfectly expresses what it is intended to be. Many have sought, and especially Creuzer, to investigate the historical origin of the Greek gods, and the signification which lies at the basis of their character. But if the god is a subject for art, that alone is a good work of art which exhibits him as what he actually is. In the religions of nature this is a mystery, something inward, a symbol, because the outward form does not actually reveal the meaning which lies in this mystery, the idea rather being that it is merely intended to reveal it. Osiris is a symbol of the sun, and similarly Hercules and his twelve labours have reference to the months; thus he is a god of the calendar, and no longer the modern Greek god. In the mysteries, the content, the manifestation, is essentially symbolical. The principal symbols had reference to Ceres, Demeter, Bacchus, and the secrets connected with these. As Ceres, who seeks her daughter, is in the language of prose the seed that must die in order to retain its true essence and to bring it into life, so, too, the seed and the germination of the seed are in turn something symbolical; for, as in the Christian religion, they have the higher signification of resurrection, or they can be taken as meaning that the same holds good of Spirit, whose true essence or potential nature can bear blossoms only through the annulling of the natural will. Thus the meaning changes about; at one time this content signifies an idea, some process, and then again the idea, the signification, may itself be the symbol for something else. Osiris is the Nile which is dried up by Typhon, the


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 fire-world, and is again brought into existence; but he is also a symbol of the sun, a universal life-giving power of Nature. Osiris finally is also a spiritual figure, and in this case the Nile and the sun are in turn symbols of the spiritual. Such symbols are naturally mysterious. The inward element is not clear as yet; it exists first as meaning, signification, which has not yet attained to true outward representation. The outward form does not perfectly express the content, so that the latter remains in a partially expressed shape at the basis of the whole without coming forth into existence. Hence it came about that the mysteries could not give to the self-consciousness of the Greeks true reconciliation. Socrates was declared by the oracle to be the wisest of the Greeks, and to him is to be traced the real revolution which took place in the Greek self-consciousness. This pivot, so to speak, of self-consciousness was not, however, himself initiated into the mysteries; they stand far below what he brought into the consciousness of the thinking world. All this has to do with the first form of reconciliation.

2. The other negative element is misfortune in general, sickness, dearth, or any other mishaps. This negative element is explained by the prophets, and brought into connection with some guilty act or transgression. A negative of this kind first appears in the physical world in the shape, for example, of an unfavourable wind. The physical condition is then explained as having a spiritual connection, and as involving in itself the ill-will and wrath of the gods—that ill-will and wrath which are brought upon men by some crime and by some offence against the divine. Or it may be that lightning, thunder, an earthquake, the appearance of snakes, and such-like are interpreted to mean something negative which essentially attaches to a spiritual and moral Power. In this case the injury has to be done away with through sacrifice, and in such a way that he who has shown himself


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 by committing the crime, imposes a forfeiture on himself, for arrogance is an injury done to a spiritual higher Power, to which accordingly humility has to sacrifice something in order to propitiate it and restore the equilibrium. In the case of the Greeks this idea seems rather to belong to primitive times. When the Greeks wished to depart from Aulis, and unfavourable winds held them back, Calchas interpreted the storm to be the wrath of Poseidon, who demands the daughter of Agamemnon as a sacrifice. Agamemnon is ready to give her up to the god. Diana saves the girl. In the Œdipus Tyrannus of Sophocles a certain disease is sent by means of which the deed of the parricide is disclosed. In later times such ideas no longer make their appearance. During the pestilence in the Peloponnesian war we hear nothing of the worship of the gods; no sacrifice was made during this war; we meet only with predictions of its conclusion. The appeal to the oracle implies that such a sacrifice has become antiquated. That is to say, if counsel is asked of the oracle, the result is viewed as determined by the god himself. Thus the result came to be regarded as something which has to happen, as a matter of necessity, a matter of fixed destiny, in connection with which no reconciliation could have a place, which could not be averted and could not be remedied.

3. The final form of reconciliation implies that the negative is really a crime, and is so regarded and declared to be such; not a crime which is only perceived to be such by the help of the explanation given through some misfortune. An individual, a state, a people commits a crime; from the human point of view the punishment is the propitiation for the crime either in the form of punishment or in the cruder form of revenge. The free spirit has the self-consciousness of its majesty, whereby it has to make what has happened as if it had not happened, and to do this within itself. An outward act of pardon is something different, but that what has


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 can within the mind itself come to be what has not happened, is something which belongs to the higher privilege of free self-consciousness, where evil is not merely act, but is something fixed and settled, and has its seat in the heart, in the guilty soul. The free soul can purify itself from this evil. Faint resemblances of this inward conversion do occur, but the general character of reconciliation here is rather outward purification. With the Greeks this too is something belonging to ancient times. A couple of instances of this are well known in connection with the history of Athens. A son of Minos was slain in Athens, and on account of this deed a purification was undertaken. Æschylus relates that the Areopagus acquitted Orestes; the rock of Athena stood him in good stead. The reconciliation here is regarded as something outward, not as inward confession. The idea expressed in Œdipus at Colonos savours of Christian thought; in it this old Œdipus, who slew his father and married his mother, and who was banished along with his sons, is raised to a place of honour among the gods; the gods call him to themselves. Other sacrifices belong still more to the outward mode of reconciliation. This is the case with the sacrifices to the dead, which are intended to propitiate the Manes. Achilles, for example, slew a number of Trojans on the grave of Patroclus, his intention being to restore the uniformity of destiny on both sides.

III.

THE RELIGION OF UTILITY OR OF THE UNDERSTANDING.

A.

THE GENERAL CONCEPTION OF THIS STAGE.

In the Religion of Beauty empty necessity was the ruling principle, and in the Religion of Sublimity unity in the form of abstract subjectivity. In the latter


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 we find, besides unity, the infinitely limited real end, and in the former again, besides necessity, we have moral substantiality, the Right, the present and real in empirical self-consciousness. In the bosom of necessity repose the many particular powers and partake of its essentiality. Represented as individuals, they are spiritual concrete subjects, and each represents a particular national spirit. They are living spirits, as, for instance, Athene is for Athens, Bacchus for Thebes, and they are also family gods, though they are at the same time transferable, because they are in their nature universal powers. Consequently the objects also with which such gods take to do are particular towns, states, and, speaking generally, a mass of particular ends.

Thus this particularity when brought under a “One” or Unity represents determinateness in its more definite form. The next demand of thought is for the union of that universality and of this particularity of these ends, in such wise that abstract necessity has its emptiness filled within itself with the particularity, with the end.

In the Religion of Sublimity, the end, when it took on a realised form, was an isolated end shutting off one particular family from others. A higher stage is accordingly reached when this end is widened so as to correspond to the compass of the Power, and when at the same time this Power itself is further developed. The particularity which is developed in detail as a divine aristocracy, and together with this the real national spirit in its various forms, which as an end comes to form part of the essential character of the Divine and is preserved within it, must get a place also within the unity. This cannot, however, be the truly spiritual unity such as we have in the Religion of Sublimity. The characteristics of the earlier stages are rather merely put back into a relative totality in which, it is true, both the religions which preceded lose their one-sidedness, but in which at the same time each of the two principles is also perverted


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 into its opposite. The Religion of Beauty loses the concrete individuality of its gods, as well as their independent moral content or character. The gods are degraded to the rank of means. The Religion of Sublimity again loses its tendency to occupy itself with the One, the eternal, the supernatural. Their union, however, is a step in advance in this, that the single end and the particular ends are broadened out so as to form a universal end. This end has to be realised, and God is the Power which is to realise it.

Action in accordance with an end is a peculiarity not only of Spirit but of life in general. It is the action of the Idea, for it is an act of production which is no longer a passing over into something other or different, whether it is now characterised as other, or, as in the case of necessity, as potentially the same, though in its outward form, and as existing for others, it is an “other.” In the end, any content, as being what is primary, is independent of the form which the transition takes, and of the alteration which takes place, so that it maintains itself within it. The impulse of this flower-like nature, which may take on an external form under the influence of the most manifold conditions, shows itself in the production only of its own development, and only in the simple form of the transition from subjectivity into objectivity. The form which reveals itself in the result is that which was formed before or pre-formed in the germ.

Action in accordance with an end is closely allied to the form of spiritual manifestation which we last considered; but spiritual manifestation in that form is, to begin with, only the superficial mode in which anything having a definite nature and any spiritual determinateness appears, apart from the existence of this determinateness as such under the form or mode of the end or Idea. The abstract characterisation and the basis of the religion which went before were expressed by the idea of necessity, and outside of it was the fulness of Nature, spiritual and physical, which accordingly is broken up so as to


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 have definite quality and to exist in definite time; while the unity is in its own nature devoid of content, roots itself within itself, and receives that serenity or joyousness which at once raises it above its determinateness and renders it indifferent towards it, only from the spiritual form and from ideality. Necessity is freedom potentially only, is not yet wisdom, and is devoid of an end. In it we find freedom only in so far as we yield up the content of freedom. Anything that is necessary, doubtless, represents something having a content, some occurrence or other, condition and consequence, &c.; but its content as such is something contingent. It may take this particular form, or it may take some other form; or, to put it otherwise, necessity is just a formal mode of existence, and its content consists merely in the fact that it is, but suggests nothing of what it is. It consists only in holding fast to this abstract form of existence.

Necessity, however, buries itself in the Notion. The Notion, or freedom, is the truth of necessity. To grasp anything in thought means that we conceive of it as a moment of a connected whole, which in its character as a connected whole has the element of difference in it, and has thus a definite and substantial nature. The connection between things which is expressed by cause and effect is itself as yet a connection of necessity, i.e., it is as yet formal. What is wanting in it is that a content be posited as determined for itself, traversant ce changement de cause en effect sans change, a content which passes through the change of cause and effect without alteration. In this case, in fact, the external relation and reality as embodied in different forms are degraded to the condition of means. In order to the carrying out of an end it is necessary to have means, i.e., something external with the power of producing effects, the essential mark of which consists in its being subordinate to the movement of the end, which preserves itself in its movement, and does away with its transitional character. In cause


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 and effect we have potentially the same content, but it appears in the form of actual independent things which mutually affect each other. The end, however, is this content which is posited as identity with itself in contrast to the apparent difference between reality and the form in which reality appears. Accordingly, in the case of action carried out in accordance with an end, nothing can come out of it which was not already there.

So far as the end is concerned, it is just in this that the difference between the end and the reality is found. The end maintains itself, mediates itself only with itself, coincides only with itself, brings about the unity of itself in the form of the unity of what is subjective with reality; but it does this through means. It is the power which is above reality, the power which has at the same time a primary content determined in and for itself, and this content is what is first and continues to be what is last. The end is thus the necessity which has taken into itself the external, particular content, and holds it fast as against reality, which has a negative character and is degraded to a means.

This unity of the content which ever dominates reality, freeing itself from its power, and maintaining itself in opposition to it, is accordingly present in life. The content, however, is not free in its own nature, free for itself in the element of Thought; it has not been given a higher form in the mode of its identity, it is not spiritual. The same unity exists in the spiritually formed ideal; but inasmuch as it is represented as being present in a free form and as beauty, it belongs to a higher stage than what has life. The quality of this unity is, so far, to be regarded as an end, and what it produces is action in accordance with an end. Its qualities, however, are not represented under the mode of the end—e.g., Apollo and Pallas do not set it before them as an end to produce and extend science and poetry; Ceres and the mystic Bacchus do not make the production and the teaching of


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 laws an end. They take under their protection what constitutes the laws, it is their special care; but here the separation between end and reality does not exist. These beings which have divine nature are those very powers and activities themselves; the Muse is herself the composition of poetry; Athene herself is Athenian life—the happiness and well-being of the city is not her end; but, on the contrary, these powers rule in as immanent a way in the reality with which they are connected as the laws act within the planets.

And further, as the gods in the stage of thought represented by beauty are in no sense means, they are just as little mutually opposed as independent; rather, they themselves disappear in necessity. If they do at a time act on their own account, they soon submit again and allow themselves to be put in their right place. While, accordingly, in necessity one determination depends on another, and the determinate character passes away, the end is posited as identity with difference and reality in it, the unity which is determined in and for itself, and which maintains itself in its determinate character as against the determinate character of something else.

The Notion, accordingly, in so far as it is posited as free in its own nature, or for self, is at first confronted by reality, and this is characterised in reference to it as negative. In the absolute Notion, the pure Idea, this reality, this hostile element, melts away into unity, and gets to be on a friendly footing with the Notion itself; it throws off its peculiar individual character, and is itself freed from the position of being merely a means. It is this which is the true conformity to an end in which is posited the unity of the Notion, of God, of the Divine Subject or person, with that in which the Notion realises itself, namely, objectivity and realisation, and it is the very nature of God Himself which realises itself in objectivity, and is thus identical with itself viewed under the aspect of reality.


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 At first, however, the end itself is as yet immediate, formal; its first determination consists in this that what is thus determined in itself should, in reference to reality, be for itself, should exist independently, and realise itself in it as something offering resistance to it. It is thus at first a finite end, and the relation between things expressed by it is a relation of the understanding, and the religion which is founded on such a basis is a religion of the understanding.

In the religion of the One we have already had an end somewhat of this sort, and something which had a close resemblance to this religion of the understanding. The religion of the One is also a religion of the understanding in so far as this One maintains itself as end as against reality of every kind, and the Jewish religion is on this account the religion of the understanding in its most rigid and lifeless form. This end consisting, as it does, in the glorification of the name of God, is formal, it has no absolutely definite character, but is only abstract manifestation. The people of God, it is true, represent a more definite end as an individual people; but this is a kind of end which it is wholly impossible to form a conception of, and is an end only in the sense in which the servant is an end for his Lord. It does not represent the nature of God Himself; it is not His end; it is not divine determinateness.

When we say that God is the Power which works in accordance with ends, and in accordance with the ends of wisdom, we are speaking in a sense different from that which at first attaches to this characterisation as applied to the stage of the development of the Notion at which we have arrived. What we mean is that those ends are undoubtedly also limited, finite ends, but that they are essentially ends of wisdom in general, and ends of one wisdom, i.e., ends of the Good in and for itself, ends which have reference to one supreme final end. These ends are consequently subordinate simply to one


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 end, or aim. The limited ends and the wisdom in them are of a subordinate character.

Here, however, the limitation of the ends is the fundamental characteristic, and this has no higher one above it.

Religion of this sort is consequently in no sense a religion of unity, but rather of multiplicity; it is neither one Power nor one wisdom, one Idea, which constitutes the fundamental determination of the divine nature.

Thus the ends which constitute the content of those forms of existence are definite ends, and these ends are not to be sought for in Nature; but, on the contrary, we find that amongst the many forms of existence, and of the relations between things, those that have reference to man are undoubtedly the really essential ones. What is human is inherently possessed of thought, and man, in pursuing his end, however unimportant it may be in itself, as, for instance, in seeking nourishment, &c., has the right of using up natural things and animal life without further ado and to whatever extent he may choose. Just for this very reason the ends are not to be sought for as if they existed objectively in the gods and in and for themselves. On the contrary, this religion, in so far as it is a definite religion, owes its origin to human ends, to human need or fortunate events and circumstances.

In the religion which went before this one, it was necessity which was the universal, and which floated above the particular.

This cannot be the case at the present stage; for in necessity finite ends disappear as in a higher form, while here, on the contrary, they represent what gives definite character to things and persists. At this stage the universal represents rather the consent to or agreement with particular ends, and, in fact, consent in general; for here the universal must remain undefined, because the ends remain individual ends, and their universality is only of the abstract sort, and is thus Happiness.

This happiness, however, is not to be distinguished


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 from necessity as belonging to the class of contingent things, for in that case it would be the necessity itself, in which those very finite ends are merely contingent; nor is it foreordination in general, and the directing of finite things in accordance with an end; but, rather, it is happiness with a definite content, with certain definite elements.

But a definite content, again, does not mean any kind of random content in general. On the contrary, although it is finite and actually present, it must be universal in its nature, and its existence must be justified on higher grounds—justified in and for itself. And this end accordingly is the State.

The State, however, as representing this end is, to begin with, only the abstract State—the union of men held together by some bond, but in such a way that this union is not yet in itself in the form of a rational organisation, and it does not yet take this form because God is not yet a rational organisation in Himself. Such conformity to an end as there is, is external; if it were conceived of as existing inwardly, it would represent the peculiar nature of God. Just because God is not yet this concrete Idea, because He does not yet represent in Himself the true fulness of Himself reached through Himself, this end, namely, the State, is not yet a rational totality in itself, and does not therefore deserve the name State, but is merely a kind of dominion or sovereignty, the union of individuals, of peoples, held together by some bond under one Power. Since, too, we have here the distinction between end and realisation, this end exists at first only in a subjective form, and not as end which has been carried out, and the realisation of it is represented by the acquiring of sovereignty, the realisation of an end which is of an à priori character, which, in the first instance, lays hold of the peoples and carries itself out.

As this quality of external utility or action in accordance with an end is different from the moral


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 of Greek life, and from the identity of the divine Powers and their external existence, so, too, this sovereignty, this universal monarchy, this end is to be distinguished from that of the Mohammedan religion. In this latter, sovereignty over the world is also the end sought after; but what is to exercise sovereignty is the One of Thought, the One of the Israelitish religion. Or when, as in the Christian religion, it is said that God wills that all men should come to a consciousness of the truth, the nature of the end is spiritual. Each individual is thought of as a thinking being, as spiritual, free, and actually present in the end, it possesses in him a central point, it is not any kind of external end, and the subject embraces within himself the entire extent of the end. Here, on the contrary, it is still empirical, a sovereignty of the world which embraces it in an external way. The end which exists in this sovereignty is one which lies outside of the individual, and the more it is realised the more external does it become, so that the individual is brought into subjection simply to this end, and serves it.

The union of universal power and universal individuality is, to begin with, implicitly contained here, but it is, so to speak, only a crude union, devoid of Spirit. The power is not wisdom, its reality is not a divine end in and for itself. It is not the One who derives his fulness from himself; this fulness is not conceived of as existing in the realm of thought; the power is worldly power, worldliness merely as sovereignty, and power in this aspect is virtually irrational. In presence of the power all that is particular accordingly crumbles away, because it is not taken up into it in a rational way, and it takes on the form of self-seeking on the part of the individual, of satisfaction in an ungodly way in particular interests. The sovereignty is outside of reason, and stands coldly, selfishly, on the one side, just as the individual does on the other.

This is the general conception of this religion. The


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 demand for what is highest is implicitly stated in it, namely, the union of what has pure Being in itself and of particular ends; but the union here is of the ungodly, undivine, crude sort just described.

B.

THIS RELIGION AS IT APPEARS OUTWARDLY IN HISTORY IS REPRESENTED BY THE ROMAN RELIGION.

It is customary to take in a superficial way the Roman religion along with the Greek religion; but the spirit of the one is essentially different from that of the other. Even if they possess certain outward forms in common, still these occupy quite a different place in the religion we are dealing with; and the religions as a whole, and the religious sentiment connected with them, are essentially different, as is indeed already evident from an external, superficial, and empirical examination of them.

It is allowed in a general way that the State, the constitution of a State, the political destiny of any people, depends on its religion, that this is the basis, the substance of its actual spiritual life and the foundation of what we call its politics. The Greek and Roman spirit, culture, and character are, however, wholly and essentially different, and this fact must of itself bring us to the difference in the religions which form the substance of these.

The divine Beings belonging to this circle of thought are practical and not theoretical gods; prosaic, not poetical; although, as we shall presently see, this stage is the richest of all in the constantly new discovery and production of gods.

I. So far as regards abstract religious sentiment and spiritual tendencies, the earnestness of the Romans is what first calls for remark. Where one end exists, and that an essentially solid one which has to be realised, the understanding referred to comes into play, and along with


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 it the earnestness which clings firmly to this end, in opposition to a great deal else which is present in feeling or in external circumstances.

In the religion which comes before this one, the religion of abstract necessity and of particular individual beings who are beautiful and divine, it is freedom which constitutes the fundamental character of the gods and which gives to them their joyousness and bliss. They are not exclusively attached to any single form of existence, but are essential powers, and represent at the same time the irony which governs all that they seek to do; what is particular and empirical has no importance for them.

The joyousness of the Greek religion, which is the fundamental trait of the sentiment pervading it, is based on the circumstance that although an end certainly exists and is regarded with reverence, as holy, still there is present at the same time this freedom from the end, and it is directly based on the fact that the Greek gods are many in number. Each Greek god has more or less substantial attributes, moral substantiality; but just because there are many particular attributes, consciousness or Spirit is something above and beyond this manifold element, and exists outside of its particular forms. It abandons what is characterised as substantial and which can also be considered as end, and is itself the irony referred to.

The ideal beauty of these gods, and their universal character itself, is something higher than their particular character; thus Mars can find pleasure in peace as well as in war. They are gods of fancy existing for the moment, without consistency, now appearing on their own account, independently, and now returning again to Olympus.

Where, on the contrary, one principle, one supreme principle and one higher end exist, there can be no room for this joyousness or serenity.

Further, the Greek god is a concrete individuality, and each of these many particular individuals has itself again


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 many different characteristics within it; there is here a rich individuality which must necessarily possess and give evidence of the existence in it of the element of contradiction, just because the two opposite elements in it have not yet been absolutely reconciled.

Since the gods have in themselves this wealth of external characteristics, we have a certain element of indifference existing in reference to those particular qualities, and they can be made sport of and be treated with levity. It is with this side of their nature that the element of contingency which we observed attached to them in the stories of the gods, is connected.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in drawing a comparison between the Greek and the Roman religion, extols the religious institutions of Rome, and points out the great superiority of the old Roman religion to the Greek. It has temples, altars, divine worship, sacrifice, solemn religious gatherings, festivals, symbols, &c., in common with the Greek religion; but the myths with their blasphemous features, the mutilations, the imprisonments, the wars, the squabbles, &c., of the gods, are excluded from it. These, however, belong to the gods in their joyous aspect, they lay themselves open to this, they are made sport of in comedy, and yet in all this they have a safe and undisturbed existence. When the element of seriousness comes in, then the outward form taken by gods, their actions and the events in their life, must appear in a way which is in conformity with a fixed principle. In free individuality, on the other hand, there are no such fixed ends, no such one-sided moral characterisations of the understanding. The gods, it is true, contain within them the moral element; but at the same time, since they have a particular definitely marked existence, they are possessed of a rich individuality, and are concrete. In this rich individuality the element of earnestness is not at all a necessary characteristic; on the contrary, it is free in all its separate manifestations, it


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 can roam about in a light-hearted way through everything, and it remains what it is. The stories which appear to be unworthy of gods have reference to the general aspects of the nature of things, the creation of the world, &c.; they have their origin in old traditions, in abstract views regarding the processes of the elements. The universal element in these views is obscured, but it is hinted at; and in this external way of regarding things, and in this want of order amongst things, a glimpse is first got of the universal nature of the intelligence which shows itself in them. In a religion, on the other hand, in which a definite end is present, all reference to theoretical points of view from which intelligence may be regarded disappears. No theories, and in fact nothing universal, are to be found in the Religion of Utility. The deity has here a definite character or content, namely, the sovereignty of the world. The universality here is empirical, not moral or spiritual, but is rather a real, actual universality.

The Roman god representing this sovereignty is to be looked for in Fortuna publica, the necessity which for others is a cold unsympathetic necessity; the particular necessity which contains the end concerned with Rome itself is Roma, sovereignty, a holy and divine Being, and this sovereign Roma in the form of a god who exercises sovereignty is Jupiter Capitolinus, a particular Jupiter—for there are many Jupiters, three hundred Joves in fact.

This Jupiter Capitolinus is not Zeus, who is the father of gods and men; but rather, he simply stands for the idea of sovereignty, and has his end in the world, and it is for the Roman people that he carries out this end. The Roman people is the universal family, while in the Religion of Beauty the divine end was represented by many families, and in the religion of the One, on the other hand, by one family only.

2. This god is not the truly spiritual One, and just because of this the Particular lies outside of this unity


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 of sovereignty. The Power is merely abstract, merely Power, and is not a rational organisation, a totality in itself, and just because of this the Particular appears as something which lies outside of the One, outside of the sovereign power.

This particular element appears partly, too, in the form taken by the Greek gods, or else we find that later on it was put side by side with them by the Romans themselves. Thus the Greeks, too, find their gods in Persia, Syria, and Babylonia, though, at the same time, this represents something different from the peculiar way in which they regarded their gods, and from the definite character of these gods, and it is only a superficial universality.

Looked at in a general way, the particular Roman deities, or at least many of them, are the same as the Greek. But still they have not the beautiful free individuality of the Greek gods; they seem to be grey, so to speak. We do not know where they come from, or else we know that they have been introduced in connection with some definite occasions. And besides, we must distinguish the real Roman gods from those Greek gods which the later poets such as Virgil and Horace have introduced into their artificial poetry in the form of lifeless imitations.

We do not find in them that consciousness, that humanity which is the substantial element in men as in the gods, and in the gods as in men. They appear like machines with nothing spiritual in them, and show themselves to be gods of the understanding which have no connection with a free beautiful spirit, with a free beautiful fancy. So, too, in those modern botches done by the French, they have the appearance of wooden figures or machines. It is, in fact, for this reason that the forms in which the Romans represent their gods have appealed more strongly to the moderns than those of the Greek gods, because the former have more the appearance of empty gods of the understanding which have no


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 longer any connection with the free and living play of fancy.

Besides those particular gods which the Romans have in common with the Greeks, there are many gods and ways of worshipping God which are peculiar to the Romans. Sovereignty is the end sought after by the citizen; but the aims of the individual are not yet exhausted by this—he has also his own particular ends. The particular ends lie outside of this abstract end.

The particular ends, however, become perfectly prosaic particular ends, and it is the common particularity of man regarded in the manifold aspects of his necessities, or of his connection with Nature, which comes to the front here. God is not that concrete individuality above referred to. Jupiter is simply sovereignty; while the particular individual gods are dead, lifeless, without mind or spirit, or, what is more, they are got at second-hand.

Particularity thus bereft of universality, and existing on its own account, is something quite common; it is the prosaic particularity of man, but it is an end for man, and he uses this or that other thing to accomplish his end. Anything, however, which is an end for man is in this region of thought a characteristic of the Divine.

The end aimed at by man and the divine end are one, but it is an end which lies outside of the Idea; thus human ends rank as divine ends, and consequently as divine powers, and so we get these many particular and supremely prosaic deities.

We thus see on one side this universal Power which is sovereignty; in it the individuals are sacrificed and have no standing as individuals. Regarding the matter from the other side, we see that the definite element, just because that unity, God, is something abstract, lies outside of this unity, and thus it is what is human that is essentially the end; it is the human element which gives fulness to God by creating a content for Him.

In the Religion of Beauty, which represents the stage


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 preceding the present one, free, universal, and moral powers constitute the object of adoration. Although they are limited, still they have an objective, independently existing content, and in the very act of contemplating them the ends of individuality melt away, and the individual is raised above his needs and necessities. They are free, and the individual attains to freedom in them; just because of this he glories in his identity with them, he enjoys their favour and is worthy of it, for he has no interests opposed to theirs, and in his needs and necessities, and in general in his particular existence, he is not an end to himself. Whether he will succeed in carrying out particular ends or not is a question he refers to the oracles only, or else he surrenders them to necessity. The individual ends here have, to begin with, a negative signification only, and are not something having a complete and independent existence.

In this religion of happiness, however, it is the self-seeking of the worshippers which is reflected in their practical gods in the shape of power, and which seeks in them and from them the satisfaction of its subjective interests. Self-seeking has in it a feeling of dependence, and just because it is purely finite, this feeling is peculiar to it. The Oriental who lives in light; the Hindu who sinks his self-consciousness in Brahma; the Greek who yields up his particular ends in the presence of necessity, and beholds in the particular powers his own powers, powers which are friendly towards him, which inspire and animate him, and are in unity with him—lives in his religion without the feeling of dependence. Far from being dependent, he is free—free before his God. It is only in Him that he possesses his freedom, and he is dependent only outside of his religion, for in it he has thrown away his dependence. Self-seeking again, need, necessity, subjective happiness, the pleasure-seeking life, which wills itself, keeps to itself, feels itself oppressed, starts from the feeling that its interests are


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 dependent on the deity. The Power which is above these interests has a positive signification, and has itself an interest for the subject, since it is to carry out its ends. So far it simply signifies that it is a means for the realisation of its ends. This is the sneaking hypocritical element in such humility; for its own ends are and must be the content, the end of this Power. This kind of consciousness accordingly has no theoretical position in religion, i.e., it does not consist in a free contemplation of objectivity, in an honouring of these powers, but only in practical selfishness, in a demand for the satisfaction of the individual interests of this life. It is the understanding which in this religion holds fast by its finite ends, by something which has been posited in a one-sided way by itself, and which is interesting only for it, and it neither sinks such abstractions and individual details in necessity nor resolves them in reason. Thus particular ends, needs, powers, appear also as gods. The content of these gods is practical utility; they serve the common good or profit.

Thus (3) the transition is made to gods who are wholly single or particular.

The family gods belong to this or that particular citizen. The Lares, on the other hand, are connected with natural morality and piety, with the moral unity of the family. There are other gods, again, whose content or character has reference to utility pure and simple of a still more special kind.

Since human life and action of this kind appear also in a form from which the negative element of evil at all events is absent, the satisfaction of those needs which belong to life takes the shape of a simple, peaceful, primitive, natural state. The time of Saturn, the state of innocence, is the picture which floats before the mind of the Roman, and the satisfaction of the needs proper to such a condition of things is represented by a crowd of gods.


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 Thus the Romans had many festivals and a crowd of gods, which were connected with the fruitfulness of the earth as well as with the skill of men, who appropriate for their own use the operations of Nature. Thus we find a Jupiter Pistor; the art of baking ranks as something divine, and the power connected with the art as something having substantial existence. Fornax, the oven in which the corn is dried, is a goddess by herself; Vesta is the fire used for baking bread; for in her character as Ἑστία a higher meaning is attached to the name, and one which has reference to family piety. The Romans had their pig, sheep, and bullock festivals; in the rites connected with the worship of Pales they sought to propitiate the goddess who caused the hay to thrive for the cattle, and to whose protection the herds committed their flocks in order to assure them against any kind of injury. In the same way they had deities for the arts which were connected with the State, e.g., Juno Moneta, since coins play an essential part in the regulated life of a community.

When, however, such finite ends as the circumstances and various interests of the State and prosperity in what belongs to the physical necessities, the progress, and material wellbeing of man, are regarded as the highest of all ends; and when the main concern is for the prosperity and existence of an immediate reality, which as being such can, in virtue of what constitutes it, be merely a contingent reality; it follows that by way of contrast to what conduces to utility and prosperity, we have what conduces to injury and failure. So far as regards finite ends and circumstances man is dependent; what he has, or enjoys, or possesses, is something having a positive existence, and when he is conscious of some opposing limit or defect, and that what he has is in the power of another, and when further he finds this negated or denied to him, he has a feeling of dependence, and the legitimate development of this feeling leads him to revere the


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 power of what is injurious and evil, to pray to the devil in fact. We do not at this stage get to the abstraction called the devil, abstract evil and wickedness in an absolutely definite form, because here the characteristics are finite, present realities with a limited content. It is only some special form of damage or defect which is here an object of fear and is revered. The concrete, which is finite, is a state, a form of reality which passes away, a kind and mode of Being which can be conceived of by reflection as an external universal, such as peace (Pax), tranquillity (Tranquillitas), the goddess Vacuna already are, and which received a fixed form from the unimaginative Romans. Such powers, which are partly allegorical and partly prosaic, are however chiefly and essentially of the kind whose fundamental character is represented by the ideas of defect and injury. Thus the Romans dedicated altars to the plague, to fever (Febris), to care (Angerona), and they revered hunger (Fames), and the blight (Robigo) which attacked the grain. In the joyous religion of art, this side of religion which consists of fear of what brings misfortune, is put into the background; the infernal powers, which might be regarded as hostile and powers to be dreaded, are represented by the Eumenides who are well disposed towards men.

It is difficult for us to understand how powers of that kind should be honoured as divine. When we have reached such ideas it is no longer possible to ascribe any definite character to what is Divine, and they can become objective only where the feeling of dependence and fear exists. This state of things represents the total absence of the Idea in any form, that decay of all truth which can happen only in such circumstances. Such a phenomenon can be explained only by the fact that Spirit is wholly shut up within the finite and the immediately useful, as is evident when we consider how amongst Romans arts and crafts connected with the most immediate needs and their satisfaction, are gods. Spirit has


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 forgotten everything inward and universal connected with thought, it has reached an utterly prosaic state, and what it aims at, what it seeks to raise itself to is nothing higher than what is supplied by the wholly formal understanding which puts together into one picture the circumstances, the character and mode of immediate Being, and knows no other mode of substantiality.

When power was thought of as existing in this prosaic condition, and when for the Romans the power which had to do with such finite ends and with immediate, real, and external circumstances, represented the welfare of the Roman Empire, it was no great step to go further and worship as God the actual present Power connected with such ends, the individual present form of such welfare, the Emperor in fact, who had this welfare in his hands. The Emperor, this monstrous individual, was the Power which presided over the life and happiness of individuals, of cities and of states, a power above law. He was a more wide reaching power than Robigo; famine, and all kinds of distress of a public character were in his hands; and more than that, rank, birth, wealth, nobility, all these were of his making. He was the supreme authority even above formal law and justice, upon the development of which the Roman spirit had expended so much energy.

All the special deities, however, are, on the other hand, again brought into subjection to the universal, real Power; they fall into the background before the universal purely essential power of sovereignty, the greatness of the Empire, which spreads itself over the whole known civilised world. In this universality the destiny of the divine particularisation consists in the necessity there is that the particular divine powers should be disposed of and pass away in this abstract universality, just as the individual and divine national spirit of the various peoples is suppressed by being brought under the one sovereign authority. This comes out also in several practical or


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 empirical features of the Roman spirit, and in Cicero we find this kind of cold reflection on the gods. Here reflection is the subjective power above the gods. Cicero institutes a comparison between their genealogies, their destinies, their actions; he enumerates many Vulcans, Apollos, Jupiters, and places them together in order to compare them. This is the kind of reflection which institutes comparisons, and in this way gives the hitherto fixed form belonging to the gods a dubious and vacillating character. The information which he gives in the treatise De Natura Deorum is in other respects of the highest importance, e.g., in reference to the origin of myths; and yet at the same time the gods are in this way degraded by reflection, definite representation of them is no longer possible, and the foundation is laid for unbelief and mistrust.

If we regard the matter from the other side however, we find that it was a universal religious necessity and along with it the stifling power of the Roman fate, which collected the individual gods into a unity. Rome is a Pantheon in which the gods stand side by side, and here they mutually extinguish each other and are made subject to the one Jupiter Capitolinus.

The Romans conquer Magna Græcia, Egypt, &c., they plunder the temples, and then we see whole shiploads of gods hurried off to Rome. Rome thus becomes a collection of all religions, of the Greek, Persian, Egyptian, Christian, and Mithra forms of worship. This kind of tolerance exists in Rome; all religions there meet together and are mixed up. The Romans lay hold of all religions, and the general result is a state of confusion in which all kinds of worship are jumbled up, and the outward form which belongs to art is lost.

C. The character of the worship connected with this religion and its characterisation are involved in the foregoing description. God is served for the sake of an end and this end is a human one. The content does


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 not start so to speak from God, it is not the content of what really is His nature, but on the contrary it starts from man, from something which is a human end.

For this reason the outward form taken by these gods can scarcely be considered as distinct from the worship paid to them; for this distinction together with free worship presupposes a truth which has a realised existence, a truth in and for self, something which is universal, objective, and truly divine, and which by means of its content rises above particular subjective necessities and exists on its own account, and thus worship is the process in which the individual gets for himself the enjoyment of his identity with what is universal and in which he commemorates this identity. Here, however, the interest originates in the subject or individual; his needs, and the fact that the satisfaction of these depends on another, produce piety, and worship is thus the positing of a Power which will relieve him and which exists because of his needs. These gods have thus essentially a subjective root and origin, and they have, as it were, an existence only in the worship paid to them; they possess substantiality in the festivals though scarcely in the conceptions formed of them. The truth, rather, is that the effort to overcome the need by the help of the power of the gods, and to get from them the satisfaction of the want and the hope of being able to do this, are merely the second part of worship, and the side which is otherwise objective comes to be included within the worship itself.

It is thus a religion of dependence and of the feeling of dependence. The dominant element in such a feeling of dependence is the absence of freedom. Man knows that he is free; but that in which he is in possession of himself is an end which remains outside of the individual, and this is still more the case with those particular ends, and it is just in reference to these that the feeling of dependence finds a place.


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 Here we have what is essentially superstition, because we are concerned with limited finite ends and objects, and those are treated as absolute which, so far as their content is concerned, are limited. Superstition, put generally, consists in giving to finitude, externality, common immediate reality as such, the value of power and substantiality. It originates in the sense of oppression felt by the spirit, in the feeling of dependence it has in connection with its ends.

Thus the Romans were always conscious of a thrill of fear in presence of anything unknown, anything which had no well-defined nature or consciousness. Everywhere they saw something full of mystery and experienced a vague kind of horror, which led them to feign the existence of something irrational which was reverenced as a kind of higher being. The Greeks on the contrary made everything clear, and constructed a beautiful and brilliant set of myths, which covered all the relations of life and Nature.

Cicero extols the Romans as being the most pious of nations, since in all departments of life they think on the gods, do everything under the sanction of religion, and thank the gods for everything. This is as a matter of fact actually the case. This abstract inwardness, this universality of the end, which is the fate in which the particular separate individual and the morality and humanity of the individual are suppressed, and in which they cannot be present in a concrete form and cannot develop—this universality, this inwardness is the basis of the Roman religion, and consequently since everything is related to this inwardness, religion is in everything. Thus Cicero, in complete accordance with the Roman spirit, derives religion from religare, for religion in all its relations has as a matter of fact become to the Roman something which binds and sways.

But this inwardness, this higher thing, this universal, is at the same time only form: the subject or content,


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 the end, in fact, of this power is the human end and is suggested by men. The Romans revere the gods because they make use of them and when they make use of them, especially in the crisis of war.

The introduction of new gods takes place in times of difficulty and anxiety or because of vows. It is distress or trouble which in general constitutes with them the universal theogony. Connected with this also is the fact that the oracle, the Sibylline books are regarded as something divine, by means of which the people get to know what they should do or what ought to happen if they are to be benefited. Arrangements of this sort are in the hands of the State or the magistrate.

This religion is not at all a political religion in the sense in which all the religions already treated of are, in the sense that the nation has in religion the supreme consciousness of its life as a State and of its morality, and is indebted to the gods for the general arrangements connected with the State, such as agriculture, property, and marriage. In the Roman religion, on the contrary, reverence for and gratitude to the gods are closely connected, partly with definite individual cases, e.g., deliverance from danger, and partly with public authority of all kinds and with state transactions, in a prosaic way, and religious feeling is in general mixed up in a finite way with finite ends and with the deliberations and resolutions connected with these.

Thus speaking generally the character of empirical particularity is impressed on necessity; it is divine, and from a religious feeling which is identical with superstition there springs up a collection of oracles, auspices, Sibylline Books, which on the one hand minister to the end aimed at by the State and on the other to particular interests. The individual on the one hand disappears in a universal element, in sovereignty, Fortuna publica, and on the other human ends are regarded as having value in themselves, and the human subject or individual has an independent,


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 substantial, and valid standing. It is within these extremes and within the contradiction involved in them that Roman life moves restlessly about.

Roman virtue, virtus, consists of that kind of cold patriotism according to which the individual gives himself wholly up to advance anything that is a matter of state or of sovereignty. The Romans too gave a visible representation of this disappearance of the individual in the universal, of this negativity, and it constitutes an essential feature of their religious games.

In a religion which has no doctrine it is by means specially of the representations given in festivals and dramas that the truth concerning the god is brought before the eyes of men. In such a religion dramas have for this reason a wholly different importance from what they have with us. In ancient times their essential object is to bring before the imagination the process of the substantial powers, the divine life in its movement and action. The adoration of the images of the gods, and the worship paid to them are connected with this divine life in its state of repose or Being, and the movement of the divine life is contained in the narratives connected with the gods, in the myth, though it is thought of as existing only for the inner subjective mental representation of the truth. And just as the idea formed of the god in his state of repose comes to find expression in some work of art, in the manner characteristic of immediate imaginative perception, so, too, the idea formed of divine action comes to be represented externally in the drama. Such a way of representing the god was not indigenous to the Romans; it was not something which sprang up on Roman soil and Roman ground; and thus in adopting what was for them originally foreign, they turned it into something empty, ghastly, horrible—as we can see in the case of Seneca—without making the moral divine Idea of it their own. So, too, it was really only the later Greek comedy which they took to do with, and they gave


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 merely of vicious scenes, and of private affairs springing out of the relations between fathers, sons, harlots, and slaves.

Amongst a people thus absorbed in the pursuit of finite ends, it was impossible that any lofty perception of moral and divine action, any theoretical or intellectual conception of those substantial powers could exist; and actions which might be theoretically interesting to them as spectators, although they had no reference to their practical interests, could have for them only an external crude reality, or, if they were to move them, a hideous reality.

In Greek drama it was what was spoken that was the main thing; the persons who acted retained a calm plastic attitude, and there was none of that mimic art, strictly so called, in which the face comes into play, but rather it was the spiritual element in the conceptions dramatised which produced the effect desired. Amongst the Romans, on the contrary, pantomime was the main thing—a form of giving expression to thoughts, which is not equal in value to the expression which can be clothed in speech.

The plays which ranked highest consisted, in fact, of nothing but the slaughter of animals and men, of the shedding of blood in streams, of life and death combats. They represent, as it were, the highest point to which imaginative conceptions could be brought amongst the Romans. There is in them no moral interest, no tragic collision in which misfortune or some ethical element constitutes the essential part. The spectators, who sought merely for entertainment, did not demand a representation of a spiritual history, but of one which was real and actual—a history, in fact, which represents the supreme change in what is finite, namely, barren, natural death—a history which is devoid of any substantial element, and is the quintessence of all that belongs to external life. These plays attained amongst the Romans such enormous


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 proportions that hundreds of men, from four to five hundred lions, tigers, elephants, crocodiles were butchered by men who had to fight with them, and who in turn butchered each other. It is, above all, the history of cold, unspiritual death which is here brought before men’s eyes—a death willed in an irrational, arbitrary way, and which serves to feast the eyes of others. It is necessity, which is purely arbitrary, murder without any substantial element or content, and which has only itself for content. It is this and this way of representing destiny which occupy the supreme place, the cold fact of dying, not a natural death, but a death brought about by an exercise of empty arbitrary will. It is not produced by some external necessity arising out of certain circumstances; it is not a consequence of the violation of some moral principle. Dying was thus the only virtue which the noble Roman could practise, and he shared this virtue with slaves and with criminals who were condemned to death.

What is here pictured to the mind is that cold kind of murder which serves merely to feast the eyes upon, the nothingness of human individuality, and the worthlessness of the individual who has no moral life in himself. It is a picture of hollow, empty destiny, which in its relation to men is something contingent, a blind arbitrariness.

Contrasted with this extreme of empty destiny in which the individual disappears, a destiny which finally found a personal representation in the power of the Emperor, a power which is arbitrary and takes its own way, unhindered by moral considerations, we have the other extreme, the assertion of the worth of the pure particularity or separate life of subjectivity.

The power has, that is to say, at the same time an end also, but this power viewed in one aspect is blind; Spirit is not yet reconciled to itself, brought into harmony with itself in it, and both accordingly continue to occupy a