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 not the powerful self-consciousness imprisoned within the particularity of desire, but the self of consciousness, which knows itself in its universality, and which thus as thinking itself, as forming conceptions within itself, knows itself as Brahma.

Or if we proceed from the determination that Brahma is Essence as abstract unity, as absorption in self, he has then his existence in the finite subject too, in the particular Spirit, as this absorption in self. To the Idea of the true there belongs the universal substantial unity and identity with self; but in such a way that it is not merely the Undetermined, not merely substantial unity, but is determined within itself. Brahma, however, has the determinateness outside of him. Thus the supreme determinateness of Brahma, namely, consciousness, the knowing of his real existence, his subjectivity of unity, can only be the subjective consciousness as such.

This attitude is not to be called worship, for there is here no relation to the thinking substantiality as to anything objective, but, on the contrary, the relation is immediately known along with the determination of my subjectivity, as “I myself.” In fact, I am this pure thought, and the “I” itself is indeed the very expression of it, for “I” as such is this abstract identity of myself within myself as wholly without determination—“I” as “I” am merely thought as that which is posited with the determination of subjective existence reflected into itself—I am what thinks. Conversely, therefore, it is conceded, on the other hand, that thought as this abstract thought has this very subjectivity which “I” directly expresses as its existence. For the true thought, which God is, is not this abstract thought, or this simple substantiality and universality, but is thought as the concrete, absolutely full or filled up Idea. The thought which is merely the potential existence of the Idea is just the abstract thought which has merely this finite existence, namely, in the subjective


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, and which has not relatively to the latter the objectivity of concrete being in-and-for-self, and therefore is quite justly not held in reverence by it.

Every Hindu is himself momentarily Brahma. Brahma is this One, the abstraction of thought, and to the extent to which a man puts himself into the condition of self-concentration, he is Brahma. Brahma himself is not worshipped; the One God has no temple, has no worship, and no prayer is addressed to him. An Englishman, the author of a treatise on “Idol-worship among the Hindus,” makes a number of reflections on the subject, and says, if a Hindu were asked whether he worships idols, he would answer without the least hesitation, “Yes, I worship idols.” If, on the other hand, we were to ask a Hindu, whether learned or unlearned, “Do you worship the Supreme Being, Paramesvara? Do you pray to Him? Do you bring Him offerings?” he would then say, “Never.” If we were to inquire further, “What is this tranquil devotion, this silent meditation which is enjoined on you and which you practise?” he would then reply, “When I engage in prayer, sit down, cross my legs over one another, fold my hands, and look toward heaven, and concentrate my spirit and my thoughts without speaking, I then say within myself, ‘I am Brahma, the Supreme Being.’”

2. Since in this first attitude we have only one moment of single prayer, of devotion, so that Brahma is momentary only in his existence, and since this existence is thus inadequate to such content and its universality, the demand arises that this existence should be made into a universal one, such as the content is. The “I,” abstractly as such, is the universal, only that this itself is merely a moment in the existence of abstraction; the next demand therefore is that this abstraction, this “I” should be made commensurate with the content. This exaltation means nothing else than the breaking off of the transition from the moment

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 of still solitude into life, into the concrete present, into concrete self-consciousness. With this, all life and all relations of concrete actual life to the One are to be renounced. The entire living Present, whether that of natural life or of spiritual life, of the family, of the State, of art, of religion, is dissolved in the pure negativity of abstract selflessness.

The highest point which is thus attained to in worship is that union with God which consists in the annihilation and stupefaction of self-consciousness. This is not affirmative liberation and reconciliation, but is, on the contrary, wholly negative, complete abstraction. It is that complete emptying which makes renunciation of all consciousness, will, emotions, needs. Man, so long as he persists in remaining within his own consciousness, is, according to the Hindu idea, ungodly. But the freedom of man justs consists in being with himself—not in emptiness, but in willing, knowing, acting. To the Hindu, on the contrary, the complete submergence and stupefaction of the consciousness is what is highest, and he who maintains himself in this abstraction and has died to the world is called a yogi.

This state is found existing among the people of India, because many Hindus, who are not Brahmans, undertake and accomplish the task of making themselves into the “I” which is in a completely abstract condition. They renounce all movement, all interests, all inclination, and give themselves up to a still abstraction; they are reverenced and supported by others, they remain speechless in rigid torpor, looking toward the sun or having their eyes closed. Some remain thus during their whole life, others for twenty or thirty years. It is related of one of these Hindus that he had travelled for ten years without ever lying down, having slept standing; during the following ten years he had held his hands above his head, and then he intended to have himself suspended by the feet to swing for three hours and three-quarters over a


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 fire, and finally to have himself buried for three hours and three-quarters. He would then have attained to the highest state, and he who succeeds in reaching such motionlessness, such lifelessness, is, according to the opinion of the Hindus, immersed thereby in the inner life, and exists permanently as Brahma.

There is an episode in the Ramayana which places us entirely at this point of view. The story of the life of Visvamitra, the companion of Rama (an incarnation of Vishnu), is thus related. There was a mighty king, who, as being such, had demanded a cow (which is worshipped in India as the generative energy of the earth) of the Brahman Vasischtha, as he had got to know of its wonderful power. Vasischtha refused it; the king thereupon seized it by force, but the cow escaped back again to Vasischtha, reproached him with having permitted it to be taken from him, since the power of a Kshatriya (which the king was) is not greater than that of a Brahman. Vasischtha then imposed on the cow the task of assembling a force for him wherewith to resist the king. The latter confronted him with his entire army, and both armies were repeatedly overthrown; finally, however, Visvamitra was conquered after his hundred sons too had been destroyed by means of a wind which Vasischtha had caused to issue from his navel. Full of despair, he hands over the government to his only remaining son, and departs with his consort to the Himalaya mountains, in order to obtain the favour of Mahadeva (Siva). Moved by the severity of his exercises, Mahadeva is prepared to fulfil his wishes. Visvamitra asks to have the knowledge of the whole science of archery, and this is granted him. Armed with his bow, Visvamitra intends to coerce Vasischtha; with his arrow he lays waste his forest. Vasischtha, however, seizes his staff, the Brahmanical weapon, and lifts it up; whereupon the gods are filled with apprehension, for such a force as this threatened the entire world with destruction.


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 They entreated the Brahman to desist. Visvamitra recognises his power, and now resolves to subject himself to the severest exercises in order to attain to that power. He retires into solitude, and lives there a thousand years in abstraction alone with his consort. Brahma comes to him, and addresses him thus: “I recognise thee now as the first royal sage.” Visvamitra, not content with this, begins afresh with his penances. In the meantime an Indian king had come to Vasischtha with the request that he would exalt him in his bodily form to heaven. The request, however, was refused on account of his being a Kshatriya; but on his haughtily persisting in it, he was degraded by Vasischtha to the class of the Tschandala. Upon this he repairs to Visvamitra with the same request. The latter prepares a sacrifice to which he invites all the gods; these, however, decline to come to a sacrifice made for a Tschandala. Visvamitra, however, by an exercise of his strength, lifts up the king to heaven. At the command of Indra, he drops down, but Visvamitra sustains him between heaven and earth, and afterwards creates another heaven, other Pleiades, another Indra, and another circle of gods. The gods were filled with astonishment; they repaired in humility to Visvamitra, and agreed with him about the place they were to assign to their king in heaven. After the lapse of a thousand years, Visvamitra was rewarded, and Brahma named him the head of the sages, but did not as yet declare him to be a Brahman. Then Visvamitra recommences his penances; the gods in heaven became envious; Indra attempts to excite his passions (for it is essential for a perfect sage and Brahman that he should have subjugated his passions). He sends him a very beautiful girl, with whom Visvamitra lives five-and-twenty years, but then withdraws himself from her, having overcome his love. In vain, too, do the gods try to irritate and make him angry. Finally, the Brahmanic power has to be granted to him.


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 It is to be observed that this is no expiation for crime; nothing is made good by means of it. This renunciation has not the consciousness of sin as a presupposition. These are, on the contrary, austerities undertaken with a view to attaining the state of Brahma. It is not penance entered upon for the purpose of atoning to the gods for any kind of crime, transgression, or offence. Penance of the latter kind presupposes the existence of a relation between the work of man, his concrete existence, his actions, and the One God—an idea which is full of content, in which man has the standard and the law of his character and behaviour, and to which he is to conform himself in his will and life. But the relation to Brahma contains as yet nothing concrete, because he himself is merely the abstraction of the substantial soul; all further determination and content lies outside of him. Thus a worship, as a substantial relation which effectually influences and directs the concrete man, has no place in the relation to Brahma. If such a relation were present here at all, it would have to be sought in the adoration of the other gods. But just as Brahma is conceived as the solitary self-enclosed Being, so, too, the exaltation of the individual self-consciousness which strives, by means of the austerities just spoken of, to render its own abstraction something perennial for itself, is rather a flight out of the concrete reality of feeling and living activity. In the consciousness which says, “I am Brahma,” all virtues and vices, all gods, and finally the Trimurti itself, vanish. The concrete consciousness of one’s self and of objective content, which, in the Christian idea of the repentance and conversion of the universal sensuous life, is relinquished, is not characterised here as anything sinful or negative, as it is in the penitential life of Christians and Christian monks, and in the idea of conversion. On the contrary, it comprehends on the one hand, as has just been indicated, the very content, otherwise esteemed as holy; and, on the other hand, we see that the


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 of the religious standpoint under consideration consists just in this, that all the moments drop asunder, and that the supreme unity casts no reflection into the fulness of the heart and life.

If the Absolute be conceived of as the spiritually free, the essentially concrete, then self-consciousness exists as something essential in the religious consciousness only, to the extent to which it maintains within itself concrete movement, ideas full of content, and concrete feeling. If, however, the Absolute is the abstraction of the “Beyond” or of the Supreme Being, then self-consciousness too, since it is by nature what thinks, by nature good, is that which it ought to be.

The man who has thus made himself into the continuously existing Brahma holds a position equivalent to that which we have already seen was held by the magician, namely, that he has won an absolute power over nature, and is that power. It is imagined that such a man can inspire even Indra with fear and apprehension. In an episode in Bopp’s “Chrestomathie” the story of two giants is mentioned, who came to the Almighty with a request for immortality; but as they had entered upon their exercises merely with a view to attaining to such power, he granted their petition only to this extent, that they are to die only by some act of their own. They then exert complete dominion over nature. Indra becomes afraid of them, and employs the usual means of inducing any one to give up such an exercise of power. He brings a beautiful woman into existence; each of the giants wishes to have her for his wife. In the strife they put each other to death, and thereby nature is delivered.

3. A characteristic which is quite peculiar remains to to be considered, and that is, that every Brahman, every member of that caste, is esteemed as Brahma, is regarded as God by every other Hindu. This particular way of viewing the matter, however, is in close connection with the previous characteristics. That is to say, each of the


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 two forms which we have considered is, as it were, a merely abstract, isolated relation of self-consciousness to Brahma; the first being only a momentary one, the second only the flight out of life—lasting life in Brahma being the lasting death of all individuality. The third demand, therefore, is that this relation should not be mere flight, mere renunciation of life, but that it should also be posited in an affirmative manner. The question is, How must the affirmative mode of this relation be constituted? It can be none other than the form of immediate existence. This is a difficult transition. What is merely inward, merely abstract, is merely outward; and thus this merely Abstract is the immediate Sensuous, is sensuous externality. Since the relation here is the wholly abstract one to wholly abstract substance, the affirmative relation is in like manner a wholly abstract, and consequently an immediate one. With this we get the concrete phenomenon implying that the relation to Brahma, the relation of the self-consciousness to him, is an immediate, a natural one, and thus an inborn one, and a relation established by birth.

Man is a thinking being, and is such by nature; thought is a natural quality of man. But the fact that he is a thinking being generally expresses a quality different from the determination which is here under consideration, from the consciousness of thought in general as the absolutely existent. In this form we have in fact the consciousness of thought, and this is then posited as the Absolute. It is the consciousness of absolute Being which is posited here as existing in a natural mode, or, to put it otherwise, which is affirmed and supposed to be inborn; and its degradation into this form is based upon the entire relation; for although it is rational knowledge, yet this consciousness is supposed to exist in an immediate form.

Since, then, man is a thinking being, and since the consciousness of thought, as the Universal, the


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, is distinguished from human thought in general, while both are something innate, it follows from this that there are two classes of men, the one including thinking men, men generally, the other including those who are the consciousness of man, as absolute Being. These latter are the Brahmans, those born again, twice born through birth, first naturally, and then as thinking men. This is a profound idea. The thought of man is looked upon here as the source of his second existence, the root of his true existence, which he gives to himself by means of freedom.

Brahmans come into existence as twice born, and are held in unbounded reverence; compared with them all other men are of no value. The entire life of the Brahmans is expressive of the existence of Brahma. Their deeds consist in giving utterance to Brahma; indeed, by right of birth they are the existence of Brahma. If any one who is of a lower caste touch a Brahman, he has by the very act incurred death. In the Code of Manu penalties are to be found for offences against Brahmans. If, for example, a Sudra utter abusive language to a Brahman, an iron staff, ten inches long, is thrust glowing into his mouth; and if he attempt to instruct a Brahman, hot oil is poured into his mouth and into his ears. A mysterious power is ascribed to the Brahmans; it is said in Manu, “Let no king irritate a Brahman, for if exasperated he can destroy his kingdom, with all his strongholds, his armies, his elephants, &c.”

The culminating point always is isolated thought as Brahma existing solely for itself. This culmination comes into existence in that immersion in nothingness, that wholly empty consciousness and contemplation already spoken of. This Brahma, however, this highest consciousness of thought, is independent, cut off from all else, and does not exist as concrete actual spirit; and accordingly it likewise follows that there is no vital connection with this unity present in the subject; on the contrary, the


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 concrete element of self-consciousness is separated from this region; the connection is interrupted. This is the leading characteristic of this sphere of thought, which, it is true, has in it the development of the moments, but in such a way that they remain separate from one another. Self-consciousness being thus cut off, the region in which it is is devoid of spirit, that is to say, has a merely natural character as something inborn, and to the extent to which this inborn self-consciousness is different from the universal one, it is the privilege of certain individuals. The individual “This” is in an immediate manner the Universal, the Divine. Spirit thus exists, but Spirit which has merely bare Being is devoid of Spirit. By this means, too, the life of the “this” as “this” and its life in universality are irremediably separated from one another. In the religions where such is not the case, that is to say, where the consciousness of the Universal, of essentiality, appears in the Particular, and is active in it, freedom of the Spirit takes its rise, and upon the fact that the Particular is determined by means of the Universal depends the appearance of uprightness, morality. In civil law, for example, we find freedom of the individual in the use he can make of property. I in this particular relation of actual existence am free; the object is held to be mine, as that of a free subject, and thus the particular existence is determined through the Universal; my particular existence is co-related with this universality. The same holds good of family relations. Morality exists only where unity is what determines the Particular, where all particularity is determined by the substantial unity. In so far as this is not posited, the consciousness of the Universal is essentially a consciousness cut off from all else, inactive and devoid of Spirit. Thus by this isolation the Highest is made into something unfree and only naturally born.

II. Worship, strictly speaking, is the relation of self-consciousness to what is essential, to that which exists


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 in and for itself; it is consciousness of the One in this essence, consciousness of one’s unity with it. The second relation here is that of consciousness to these very manifold objects. The many deities constitute these objects.

Brahma has no divine service, no temple, and no altars; the unity of Brahma is not put in relation to the Real, to active self-consciousness. From what has been stated, namely, that the consciousness of the One is isolated, it follows that nothing is determined by means of reason here in the relation to the Divine; for this would mean that particular actions, symbols, &c., are determined by means of unity. Here, however, the region of the Particular is not determined by this unity, and has thus the character of irrationality, of unfreedom. What we have is merely a relation to particular deities, which represent nature as detached or free. They are, it is true, the most abstract possible moments implicitly determined through the notion, but not taken back into unity in such a manner that the Trimurti would become Spirit. Their whole significance therefore is merely that of a mode of some particular natural element. The leading characteristic is vital energy or life force, that which produces and which passes away, what returns to life and is self-transformation, and to this natural objects, animals, &c., are linked on as objects of reverence. Thus worship is here a relation to those particular things which are cut off in a one-sided manner from what is essential, and is therefore a relation to unessential things in natural form. Religious action, that is to say, action that is essential, a universal mode of life, is conceived of and carried out in accordance with this, and is known and realised here in this fashion. And here religious action is a content which is unessential and without reason.

Since this element, considered generally, is partly objective, namely, the perception of God, and partly subjective, namely, that which it is essential to do, and


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 seeing that what is of most importance becomes unessential, the worship is infinite in its range; everything comes into it, the content is of no importance, it has no limit within itself; the religious acts are thus essentially irrational, they are determined in an entirely external manner. Whatever is truly essential is stable; is, as regards its form, exempt from the influence of subjective opinion and caprice. Here, however, the content is this sensuous contingency, and the action is a merely characterless action, consisting of usages which cannot be understood, because there is no understanding in it; on the contrary, a latitude is introduced into it which runs out in all directions. In so far as all this is transcended, and in so far as there must be satisfaction in these religious acts, we find this to be attained merely by means of sensuous stupefaction. The one extreme is the flight of abstraction, the middle point is the slavery of unintelligent being and doing, and the other extreme is capricious extravagance—surely the saddest possible religion. In so far as flight or escape enters into this cult, what is actually done represents mere purely external accomplished action, mere activity, and to this are added the wildest intoxication and orgies of the most fearful kind. Such is the necessary character of this worship, a character which it acquires owing to the fact that the consciousness of the One is broken up in this way, for the connection with the rest of concrete existence is interrupted, and everything becomes disconnected. In the region of imagination are found wildness and freedom, and here fancy has free scope. Thus we find most beautiful poetry among the Indian peoples, but it always rests upon the craziest foundation; we are attracted by its loveliness, and repelled by the confusion and nonsense in it.

The delicate sensibility and charm of the tenderest feelings and this infinite resignation of personality, must necessarily possess supreme beauty under such conditions


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 as are peculiar to this standpoint, because it is only this feeling which, resting thus upon a foundation so devoid of rationality, is moulded exclusively into forms of beauty. But since this feeling of abandonment is without the element of right, it, for this very reason, is seen to alternate with the most extreme harshness, and thus the moment of the independent existence of personality passes over into ferocity, into forgetfulness of all established bonds, and issues in the trampling under foot of love itself.

The whole content of Spirit and of nature generally is allowed to break up in the wildest way. That unity which occupies the leading position is indeed the Power out of which all proceeds and into which all returns; but it does not become concrete, does not become the uniting bond of the manifold powers of nature, and in like manner does not become concrete in Spirit, nor the bond of the manifold activities of Spirit and of emotional experiences.

In the first case, when the unity becomes the bond of natural things, we call it necessity; this is the bond of natural forces and phenomena. We look upon natural properties, things, as being, though independent, essentially linked together; laws, understanding, are in Nature, so that in this way the phenomena are co-related.

But that unity remains in solitary and empty independence, and accordingly that fulness which it acquires is wild, extravagant disorder. In the spiritual world, in like manner, the Universal, thought, does not become concrete, determining itself within itself. Thought determining itself within itself, and abrogating and preserving the determinate element in this universality—pure thought as concrete, is Reason.

Duty, right, exist in thought only. These determinations when they appear in the form of universality are rational in respect to the truth, the unity just spoken of, and likewise in respect to the will. That One, that


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 solitary unity, however, does not become such concrete unity, reason, rationality.

For this reason there is no right, no duty present here, for the freedom of the will, of the Spirit, just consists in being present with itself in determinateness. But here this being present or at home with itself, this unity, is abstract, is devoid of determinate character. And here is one source of the fantastic polytheism of the Hindus.

It has been remarked that the category of Being is not found here; the Hindus have no category for what we call independent existence in things, or what we express when we say “they are,” “these are.” Man, to begin with, knows himself only as existing independently, he therefore conceives of an independent object of nature as existing with his independence, in the mode of independence which he has in himself, in his Being, in his human form, as consciousness.

Here fancy makes everything into God. This is what we see in its own fashion among the Greeks, too, where all trees and springs are made into dryads or nymphs. We are accustomed to say that the beautiful imagination of man gives soul and life to everything, conceives everything as endowed with life, that man wanders among his like, anthropomorphises everything, by his beautiful sympathy shares with everything that mode of beauty which is his own, and thus, as it were, presses everything to his heart as having animated life.

But the liberality of the Hindus in the wild extravagance of their desire to share their mode of existence, has its foundation in a poor idea of themselves, in the fact that the individual has not as yet within himself the content of the freedom of the Eternal, the truly and essentially existent, and does not as yet know his content, his true nature, to be higher than the content of a spring or of a tree. Everything is squandered on imagination, and nothing reserved for life.

With the Greeks this is more a play of fancy, while


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 among the Hindus there is no higher feeling of themselves present. The idea which they have of Being is only that which they have of themselves; they place themselves upon the same level with all the productions of nature. This is because thought lapses so completely into this abstraction.

These natural powers, then, whose being is thus conceived of as anthropomorphic and as conscious, are above the concrete man, who, as having a physical nature, is dependent upon them, and his freedom is not as yet distinguished from this his natural aspect.

It is implied by this that the life of man has no higher value than the being of natural objects, the life of any natural thing; the life of man has value only if it is in itself or essentially, higher; but among the Hindus human life is despised, and is esteemed to be of little worth—there a man cannot give himself value in an affirmative, but only in a negative manner.

Life acquires value only by the negation of itself. All that is concrete is merely negative in relation to abstraction, which is here the ruling principle. From this results that aspect of Hindu worship according to which men sacrifice themselves, and parents their children. To this is due, too, the burning of wives after the death of their husbands. Such sacrifices have a higher value when they take place with express reference to Brahma, or to any god whatever, for the latter is Brahma likewise.

It is esteemed among the Hindus a sacrifice of high value when they mount to the snow clefts of the Himalaya, where the sources of the Ganges are, and cast themselves into the springs. Such actions are not penances on account of crime, nor are they sacrifices with a view to making amends for any evil deed, but merely sacrifices to give oneself value, and this value can be attained only in a negative way.

With the position which is here given to man animal-worship is closely connected. An animal is not a scious


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 spirit, but in this concentration of absence of consciousness man is really not far removed from the brutes. By the Hindus action is not conceived as definite activity, but as simple energy which works through everything. Special activity is despised; it is only stupefaction which is held in esteem, and in this state it is clearly the animal life alone which is left remaining. And if no freedom, no morality, no good customs be present, then the power is only known as inward, torpid power, which belongs likewise to the brutes, and to them in the most complete degree.

Since man when he exists in this way is without freedom, and has no intrinsic worth, we find bound up with this in the sphere of concrete extension that unspeakable and infinitely varied superstition, those enormous fetters and limitations above referred to. The relation of man to external natural things, which is of little consequence to Europeans, that dependence on them, becomes something fixed, something permanent. For superstition has its foundation just in this, that man is not indifferent toward external things; and he is not so if he has no freedom within himself, if he has not the true independence of spirit. All that is indifferent is fixed, while all that is not indifferent, all that belongs to right and morality, is thrown away and abandoned to caprice.

Of this character are the directions which the Brahmans have to observe, and of a similar character, too, is the narrative of Nala in the Mahabharata. Just as superstition is of limitless extent owing to this want of freedom, so too it follows that no morality, no determination of freedom, no rights, no duties have any place here, so that the people of India are sunk in the most complete immorality. Since no rational determination has been able to attain to solidity, the entire condition of this people could never become a legitimate one, a condition inherently justified, and was always merely a condition on sufferance, a contingent and a perverted one.


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 3. The Religion of Being-within-self.

(a.) Its conception.

The general basis here is still the same as that which is peculiar to the Indian religion; what advance there is merely consists in the necessity felt that the characteristics of the Indian religion should be brought together again out of their wild, lawless independence, out of their merely natural state of dispersion, placed in their inner relation, and have their unstable chaos reduced to a state of rest. This religion of Being-within-self is the concentration and tranquillisation of spirit as it returns out of the arid disorder of the Indian religion into itself and into essential unity.

The essential unity and the differences have hitherto continued to keep apart to such an extent that the latter were essentially independent, and only vanished in the unity in order at once to reappear in all their independence. The relation of the unity and the differences was an infinite progression, a perennial alternation of the vanishing of differences in unity, and their reappearance in their own essential independence. This alternation is now arrested, because that which is potentially contained in it, namely, the coming together of the differentiations in the catagory of unity, is actually posited.

In its character as this Being-within-itself, for which all relation to another is now precluded, the essence is essentiality existing within itself, reflection of negativity into itself, and is thus that which is at rest within itself and persists.

However defective this determination may be, for the Being-within-itself is not as yet concrete, is only the disappearance of the independent differences, yet we are on firm ground here; it is a true determination of God which constitutes the foundation.

If we compare this general conception with the assumption that we know nothing of God, then this religion,


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 however poor and mean it may seem, yet stands higher than that which asserts that God cannot be known. For in such a case there can be no possibility of worship, since a man can only worship what he knows, what he has a rational knowledge of. Is colit Deum qui eum novit, is an example in frequent use in the Latin grammar. Self-consciousness has at least here an affirmative relation to this object, for the very essence of being-within-itself is thought itself, and this is the real essential element in self-consciousness, and therefore there is nothing unknown in it, nothing which is “beyond.” It is in presence of its own essence in an affirmative form, since it at once knows this essence as its own essential nature; but it also conceives it as an object, so that it distinguishes this being-within-itself, this pure freedom, from itself, from this particular self-consciousness. For this last is contingent, empirical, independent Being, being for self, determined in a manifold way. This is the fundamental determination.

Substance is universal presence, but as essentiality existing within itself, it must be known concretely too in an individual concentration. This embodiment and definite form is still in accordance with the standpoint of natural religion, the immediate form of the Spiritual, and has the form of a single definite self-consciousness. Thus, as compared with the previous stage, there is an advance made here from fantastic personification split up into a countless multitude of forms, to a personification which is enclosed within definite bounds, and is actually present. A human being is worshipped, and he is as such the god who assumes individual form, and in that form gives himself up to be reverenced. Substance in this individual existence is power, sovereignty, the creating and maintaining of the world, of nature, and of all things—absolute Power.

(b.) The historical existence of this religion.

It is as the religion of Foe that this religion has an historical existence; it is the religion of the Mongols,


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 the Thibetans in the north and west of China, also of the Burmese and Cingalese, where, however, that which is elsewhere called Foe is designated Buddha. It is, in fact, the religion which we know under the name of Lamaism. It is the most widely spread of religions, and has the greatest number of adherents. Its worshippers are more numerous than those of Mahomedanism, which again counts more adherents than the Christian religion. As in the Mahomedan religion, a simple Eternal constitutes the fundamental idea and the characteristic quality of the inner element, and this simplicity of its principle is of itself sufficient to bring diverse nationalities under its sway.

Historically, this religion appears rather later than that form in which the absolute Power is what rules. The French missionaries have translated an edict of the Emperor Hia-King by which he suppressed many monasteries, because those who lived in them did not till the ground and paid no tribute. Here the Emperor says, in the beginning of the edict, “Under our three famous dynasties the sect of Foe was not heard of. Only since the dynasty of Hang has it come into existence.”

The general conception of this religion in its more definite features is as follows.

1. The absolute foundation is the stillness of being-within-itself, in which all differences cease, in which all determinations of the natural existence of Spirit, all particular powers, have vanished. Thus the Absolute, as being-within-itself, is the Undetermined, the annihilation of all particularity, so that all particular existences, all actual things, are merely something accidental, are merely Form having no significance.

2. Since reflection into itself as the Undetermined (and this too is in harmony with the standpoint of natural religion) is merely immediate reflection, it is expressed in this form as a principle; nothing and not-being is what is ultimate and supreme. It is nothing alone which


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Rh Cockatoos—Swans—Cockatoo broth—Startled in the dark—A thankless offer—Kylies used in killing birds—Painting a kylie—Bronze-winged pigeons—Ngowa—Method in which Ngowa prepares nest—Rare birds driven into inhabited districts by want of water—We lose turkey—Painted snipe—Cat's tribute to fidelity of artist—Cinnamon-coloured heron—Moths and other marauders—Fish called Coblers—Snappers and mullet—Crawfish—Fresh-water turtles—Frying turtle-eggs proves a bad experiment—Affectionate disposition of aborigines—Wild ducks—Khourabene's complacency at a well-filled bag—Game laws—"Father and mother, I must hook it away!"—Strong feeling of ownership with respect to land on part of natives—Metempsychosis—Forest laws less severe amongst Australians than amongst ancient Normans—Accumulation of water in consequence of felling timber—Amends made by white man—Corobberies—Mortality and early deaths amongst natives—Bishop Salvado's way of dispersing combatants—His remonstrances produce no effect with native husbands—Drought—Want of tanks—Floods—Swollen river renders farm-yard impassable—Washing on river bank—Inconvenience of distant wells—Temptations to gossip at wells—Anecdote of encamping at night without water—Enthusiastic welcome of boy and pony—Custom capable of sweetening brackish water. …

CHAPTER XI.

Winter a favourable time for exploring parties—Explorers turn back for want of water—Second expedition—Excitement at setting out—School copies—Second disappointment—Wild puppies give great umbrage—Bushrangers—Impassable bush serves as prison wall—Fire-arms indispensable to bushrangers—Fatal occurrences—Native trackers—Chain-gang—Conditional pardons—Fact of having been in Western Australia suppressed by immigrants in Adelaide—Tale of escape—Discontent of ticket-of-leave men on cessation of conditional pardons—An oppressive state of law—Truck system—Anecdote of shoemaker—Benevolent master—Tendency of truck system to destroy gratitude—Archdeacon Paley's opinion of paying ready money—Girl thinks it high time bucket should be worn out—Reckless expenditure of wages—Savings' bank discouraged, and why—French convict saves money—Barter—Paying one's creditor with eggs—Dressmaker paid with melons and almonds—Hospital admission—Nursing the sick—Presents to patients forbidden—Hospital orderlies—Dentists—French Colonel—Ophthalmia—"Bunged" eyes—Squints—Measles and hooping-cough—Mortality from measles amongst natives—A "corporal act of mercy"—Native hops and tea—Holloway's pills—Woman severely burnt—Broken

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 has true independence; all other actuality, all particularity, has none at all. Out of nothingness everything has proceeded; into nothingness everything returns. Nothing, nothingness is the One, the beginning and the ending of everything. However diverse men and things may be, there is but the One principle—nothingness—out of which they proceed, and it is form alone which constitutes the quality, the diversity.

That man should think of God as nothingness must at first sight seem astonishing, must appear to us a most peculiar idea. But, considered more closely, this determination means that God is absolutely nothing determined. He is the Undetermined; no determinateness of any kind pertains to God; He is the Infinite. This is equivalent to saying that God is the negation of all particularity.

When we consider the forms of expression which we hear used, and which are current at the present day, namely, “God is the Infinite, is Essence—pure, simple Essence, the Essence of Essences and Essence only”—we find that such expressions are either entirely or nearly identical in signification with the statement that God is nothingness. In like manner, when it is said that man cannot know God, God is thus for us emptiness, indefiniteness.

That modern mode of definition is therefore merely a milder expression for “God is nothingness.” That, however, is a definite, a necessary stage: God is the Indeterminate, the indeterminateness in which immediate Being and its apparent independence are abrogated and absorbed, and in which they have vanished away.

3. God, although actually conceived of as nothingness, as Essence generally, is yet known as a particular immediate human being, as Foe, Buddha, Dalailama. Such a conjunction may appear to us the most offensive, revolting, and incredible of all, that a man with all his sensuous needs should be looked upon as God, as He who eternally creates, maintains, and produces the world.


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 When in the Christian religion God is worshipped in human form, that is something altogether different; for the divine Essence is there beheld in the man who has suffered, died, risen again, and ascended to heaven. That is not man in his sensuous, immediate existence, but man who has taken on the form of Spirit. The most startling contrast, however, is when the Absolute has to be worshipped in the immediate finite nature of a human being; this is an even more isolated individualisation than the animal itself is. And what is more, humanity has within itself the requirement that it should rise higher, and hence it seems repugnant that this demand should be suppressed, and man’s aspiration tied down to continuance in ordinary finite existence.

We must, however, learn to understand this general conception, and in understanding it we justify it: we show how it gets its foundation, its element of rationality, a place within reason; but it is also implied in this that we perceive its defectiveness. In dealing with religions, we must learn to perceive that what is in them is not mere nonsense, mere irrationality. What is of more importance than this, however, is to recognise the element of truth, and to know how it is in harmony with reason; and that is more difficult than to pronounce a thing to have no sense in it.

Being-within-itself is the essential stage, so that we may advance from immediate, empirical singularity to the determination of essence, of essentiality, to the consciousness of Substance, of a substantial Power which governs the world, causes everything to originate and come into being in accordance with rational laws of connection. So far as it is substantial, inherently existent, it is a power which works unconsciously; and just because of this it is undivided activity, has universality in it, is universal power. And in order to make this intelligible to ourselves, we must recall the expressions activity of nature, spirit of nature, soul of nature. We do not mean by


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 these that the spirit of nature is conscious spirit, nor in using them are we thinking of anything conscious. The natural laws of plants, animals, of their organisation and action, are devoid of consciousness: these laws are the substantial element, are their nature, their notion; they are this implicitly, are the reason that is immanent in them, but without consciousness.

Man is Spirit, and his spirit determines itself as soul, as this unity of what has life. This its life force, which in the unfolding of his organised existence is one only, permeating and sustaining everything, this activity is present in man so long as he lives, without his knowing it or willing it; and yet his living soul is the cause, the originating agency, the Substance, which produces it. Man, this living soul, knows nothing of this; he does not will this circulation of the blood, does not prescribe it to himself; yet he does it: it is his deed. Man is the acting, working power in that which goes on in his organism. This unconscious active rationality or unconscious rational activity is the ruling of the world by vovs; among the ancients the νους of Anaxagoras. This is not conscious reason. By modern philosophers, especially by Schelling, this rational activity has been also called perception or intuition—God as intuitive intelligence. God, intelligence, reason as intellectual intuition, is the eternal creation of nature, what is called the maintenance of nature; for creation and preservation are inseparable. In perception we are immersed in the objects; they fill us. This is the lower stage of consciousness, this immersion in the objects; to reflect upon them, to arrive at general ideas, to originate points of view, to attach certain determinations to certain objects—to judge—is no longer perception as such.

Such then is this standpoint of substantiality, of intellectual perception or intuition. This is really the standpoint of Pantheism in the true sense of the word, this Oriental knowledge, consciousness, thought of this


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 unity, of the absolute Substance and the activity of this Substance within itself, an activity in which all that is particular, that is individual, is merely something transient, vanishing, and does not represent true independence.

This Oriental conception stands in contrast to that of the West, in which man, like the sun, sets into himself, into his subjectivity. Here individuality is the leading category, the fact, namely, that it is the individual which is independent. As with the Orientals it is the Universal which is the truly independent, so in this form of consciousness we find the singularity or individuality of things, of mankind, occupying the foremost place; indeed, the Occidental mode of conception is capable of going so far as to assert that finite things are independent, that is to say, absolute.

The expression Pantheism has the same ambiguity which attaches to Universality. “Ἕν καὶ Πᾶν means the One All, the All, which remains absolutely One; but Πᾶν means also Everything, and thus it is that it passes over into that idea which is devoid of thought, and is a poor and unphilosophical one.

Thus Pantheism is understood as meaning the divine nature of all things, not the divine nature of all: for in the case of all being deified, if God were All, there is only one God; in the All, particular things are absorbed, and are merely shadows, phantoms; they come and go, the very nature of their being is to vanish.

Philosophy is, moreover, asked to confess that it is Pantheism in the first of these two senses, and it is theologians especially who use this kind of language.

The ambiguity of Universality is precisely the same. If it be taken in the sense of the universality of reflection, it is in that case allness; and in the next place, this is taken to mean that individuality remains independent. But the Universality of Thought, the substantial universality, is unity with itself, in which all that is


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, that is particular, is merely ideal, and has no true Being.

This substantiality is the fundamental determination of our knowledge of God too, but it is only the fundamental determination, the foundation not being yet the True. God is the absolute Power, we must say that; He alone is Power. Everything which pretends to say of itself that it is, that it has reality, is annulled, absorbed, is only a moment of the absolute God, the absolute Power. God alone is; God alone is the One true reality.

In our religion too this lies at the foundation of the idea of God. The omnipresence of God, if it is no empty word, directly expresses substantiality; the latter underlies it. But stupidity continues to prate of these profound religious expressions as a mere matter of memory, and is not at all in earnest about them. As soon as true Being is ascribed to the finite, as soon as things are independent, God is shut out from them; then God is not omnipresent at all, for if God is omnipresent, it will at once be said that He is real, and not the things.

He is therefore not beside the things, in the pores, like the God of Epicurus, but actually in the things: and in this case the things are not real, and this presence in them is the ideality of the things. For that feeble way of thinking, on the other hand, things are invincible; they are an impregnable reality. Omnipresence must have a true meaning for the spirit, heart, thought; Spirit must have a true interest in it. God is the subsistence of all things.

Pantheism is a bad expression, because it is possible to misunderstand it so that Πᾶν is taken in the sense of allness or totality, not as universality. The philosophy of Spinoza was a philosophy of substantiality, not of Pantheism.

God is in all higher religions, but especially in the Christian religion, the absolutely One Substance. He is,


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 at the same time, however, subject too, and that represents a further stage. As man has personality, the characteristic of subjectivity, personality, spirit, absolute spirit, enters into God. This is a higher characteristic, but Spirit nevertheless remains Substance, is the One Substance notwithstanding.

This abstract Substance, which is the ultimate principle of the philosophy of Spinoza, this Substance which is thought of, which is only for thought, cannot be the content of the religion of a people, cannot be the faith of a concrete spirit. Spirit is concrete; it is only abstract thought which remains in one-sided determinateness of this kind, in that of Substance.

The concrete spirit supplies the deficiency, and this deficiency is that subjectivity is wanting, that is to say, spirituality or the spiritual element. Here at the stage of natural religion, however, this spirituality does not yet exist as such, is not yet thought-out spirituality, universal spirituality, but sensuous, immediate spirituality; here it is a man, as sensuous, external, immediate spirituality, and therefore in the form of the spiritual life of a definite human being, of an empirical, individual consciousness. Now if this man remains in contrast with this Substance, with the inherently universal Substance, then it must be remembered that man as living substantiality is really this inherent substantial reality in himself, which is determined by his bodily existence; it must be possible to think that this life force is in a substantial way active life within him. This point of view contains universal Substantiality in an actual form.

Here the idea presents itself that a man is universal Substance in his act of meditation, when he is occupied with himself, when he is absorbed in himself; not merely in his active life, but in his absorption in self, in the centre of the νους, of the νους posited as the centre, but in such a way that the νους is not conscious of itself in its determination and development.


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 This substantiality of the νους, this absorption represented in one individual, is not the meditation of a king, who has in his consciousness the thought of the administration of his empire; but rather implies that this absorption in self is as abstract thought potentially active substantiality, the creation and preservation of the world.

The subjective form is not as yet exclusive here: only in the interpenetration of spirituality, subjectivity, and substance does God become essentially One. Thus Substance is certainly One; but Subjectivity, these outward embodiments, are several, and it is their very nature to be several: for this assumption of outward form is conceived of as itself in relation to substantiality, as something essential in fact, while yet at the same time it is also conceived of as something that is accidental.

For opposition, contradiction, first appears only in consciousness, in will, in a particular act of intelligence, and for this reason there cannot be several worldly rulers in one land. But this spiritual activity, although it has spiritual form for its definite existence or actual embodiment, is yet merely activity of substance, and does not appear as conscious activity, as conscious will.

Thus there are several, that is to say, three principal Lamas: the first, Dalailama, is to be found in Lassa, to the north of the Himalayas. There is another Lama in Little Thibet, in Tischu-Lombu. in the neighbourhood of Nepaul. Finally, in Mongolia there is yet a third Lama.

Spirit can, indeed, have one outward form only, and this is man, the sensuous manifestation of Spirit. But if the inner element is not determined as Spirit, the form at once becomes accidental or indifferent. The eternal life of the Christian is the Spirit of God itself, and the Spirit of God just consists in self-consciousness of oneself as the Divine Spirit. At this stage, on the other hand, Being-within-itself is still devoid of determination, is not as yet Spirit. It is immediate Being-within-itself; the eternal as this Being-within-itself has as yet no content,


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 so that we cannot speak of the form as corresponding to the inner nature. The indifference of the form extends here even to the objectively eternal. Death even is no interruption as regards the substantial Essence; as soon as ever a Lama dies, another is at hand at once, so that the Essence is the same in both, and he can be sought for directly, being recognisable by certain marks. Thus we have a description by the English ambassador Turner of the Lama in Little Thibet; he was a child of two or three years old, whose predecessor had died on a journey to Pekin, to which place he had been summoned by the Chinese Emperor. A regent, the minister of the previous Dalailama, who is designated his cup-bearer, took the place of this child in the affairs of government.

There is a difference between Buddhism and Lamaism. What they have in common has been already indicated, and those who worship Foe and Buddha worship the Dalailama also. It is, however, more under the form of some dead person, who yet has also a present existence among his successors, that the latter is worshipped. Of Foe, too, in like manner, it is related that he had incarnated himself eight thousand times, and had been present in the actual existence of a human being.

Such are the fundamental determinations which result from what is here the divine nature, and which alone result from it, since this itself is still confined entirely to the undeveloped abstraction of calm, characterless Being-within-itself. On this account all further embodiment and mental representation of it is made entirely dependent, partly on the accidental element of empirical historical events, and partly on that of ungoverned imagination. The details of it belong to a description of the countless confused imaginings about certain incidents connected with, or things that have befallen these deities, their friends and disciples, and yield material which, so far as its substance is concerned, has but little


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 interest or value, and indeed, for the reasons already stated, has not the interest of the Notion.

In regard to worship, we have not to do here with external ceremonies and customs. It is the essential element alone which is to be described here, namely, how Being-within-itself, the principle of this stage, appears in the actual consciousness.

(c.) Worship or cultus.

This religion of substantiality has influenced the character of the peoples who profess it in the degree in which they have made exaltation above the immediate individual consciousness a thorough-going requirement.

1. Since the One is conceived of as the Substantial, this immediately involves elevation above desire, above the individual will, above savagery—involves immersion in this inwardness, this unity. The image of Buddha is in this thinking position: the feet and arms are folded over one another so that one toe goes into the mouth, representing this returning into self, this self-absorption. The character of the peoples who profess this religion is that of calmness, gentleness, obedience, which is superior to savagery, to passion.

But it is the Dalailama above all who is the manifestation of perfect and satisfied Being-within-itself. His leading characteristics are repose and gentleness, with which he combines insight and a thoroughly noble manner of existence. Nations worship him, regarding him in the fair light of one living in pure contemplation, the absolute Eternal being present in him. If the Lama has to direct his attention to eternal things, he is then exclusively occupied with the beneficent office of bestowing consolation and help; his primary attribute is to forget and to have mercy. That child which was in Little Thibet when the English ambassador already mentioned arrived there, was, it is true, still being suckled, but was a lively intelligent child, behaved with all possible dignity and propriety, and seemed already to have


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 a consciousness of his higher dignity. And the ambassador could not sufficiently praise the regent for his noble bearing and passionless repose. The preceding Lama, too, had been a discerning, worthy, high-minded man. That, however, an individual should have substance concentrated in himself, and should outwardly display this worthy and noble character, are two things which are in close relation to each other.

In so far as the stillness of Being-within-itself is the extinction of all that is particular, is nothingness, this state of annihilation is the highest state for man, and his destiny is to immerse himself in this non-existence, eternal repose, in nothingness—in fact, in the substantial, where all determinations cease, and there is no will, no intelligence. By persistent immersion and meditation within himself man is supposed to become like to this principle, to come to be without passion, without inclination, without action, and to arrive at a condition in which he desires nothing and does nothing.

There is no question here of virtue, vice, reconciliation, immortality; the holiness of a man consists in his uniting himself in this extinction, in this silence, with God, with nothingness, with the Absolute. The highest state consists in the cessation of all bodily motion, of all movement of the soul. When this level has been reached, there is no descent to a lower grade, no further change, and man has no migration to fear after death, for he is then identical with God. Here, therefore, we have expressed the theoretical moment that man is something substantial, exists for himself. The practical element is that he wills; if he wills, then that which is is an object for him which he alters, upon which he impresses his form. The practical value of religious feeling is determined in accordance with the content of that which is regarded as the True. In this religion, however, this theoretical element is still present, namely, that this unity, purity, nothingness is absolutely independent in relation to


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, that it is its nature not to act in opposition to the objective, not to give it form, but to leave it to itself, so that this stillness is produced in it. This is the Absolute; man has to make himself nothingness. The value of man consists in this, that his self-consciousness has an affirmative relation to that theoretical substantiality. This is the opposite of that relation which, since the object has no determination for it, is of a merely negative nature, and for that very reason is only affirmative, as being a relation of the subject to its own inwardness, which is the power to transmute all objectivity into a negative, that is to say, is affirmative in its “vanity” alone.

That still, gentle state of mind has, in the first place, momentarily in worship the consciousness of such eternal repose as essential divine Being, and this gives the tone and character to the rest of life. But self-consciousness is at liberty too to make its entire life a permanent state of that stillness and contemplation without existence; and this actual withdrawal from the eternal conditions of the needs and activities of life into the tranquil inner region, and the consequent attainment of union with this theoretical substantiality, must be considered as the supreme consummation. Thus great religious associations take their rise among these peoples, the members of which live in community in repose of the spirit, and in tranquil contemplation of the Eternal, without taking part in worldly interests and occupations.

If a man assumes this negative mental attitude, defends himself not against what is external, but only against himself, and unites himself with nothingness, rids himself of all consciousness, of all passion, he is then exalted to the state which among Buddhists is called Nirvana. In this condition man is without gravity, he has no longer any weight, is not subject to disease, to old age, to death; he is looked upon as God Himself; he has become Buddha.


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 2. If by transplanting himself into this state of abstraction, this perfect solitude, this renunciation, nothingness, a man attains to this, that he is undistinguishable from God, eternal, identical with God, then the ideas of immortality and transmigration of souls enter as an essential element into the doctrines of Foe, of Buddha. This standpoint is, strictly speaking, higher than that at which the adherents of Tao are supposed to make themselves Shan, immortal.

While this is given out as the highest destiny of man, namely, to make himself immortal by means of meditation, by returning into himself, it is not at the same time asserted that the soul in itself as such is persistent and essential, that the spirit is immortal, but only that man makes himself for the first time immortal by this abstraction, this exaltation, that he ought, in fact, to make himself such. The thought of immortality is involved in the fact that man is a thinking being, that he is in his freedom at home with himself; thus he is absolutely independent; an “Other” cannot break in upon his freedom: he relates himself to himself alone; an Other cannot give itself valid worth within him.

This likeness or equality with myself, “I,” this self-contained existence, this true Infinite, is accordingly what, in the language peculiar to this point of view, is immortal, is subject to no change; it is itself the Unchangeable, what is within itself alone, what moves itself only within itself. “I,” is not dead repose, but movement—movement, however, which is not called change, but is eternal rest, eternal transparency within itself.

Since God is known as the essential, is thought of in His essentiality, and since Being-within-itself, and self-contained Being or Being-with-itself is a true determination, so in relation to the subject this Being-within-itself, this essentiality is known as its nature, the subject being inherently spiritual. This essentiality attaches to the soul, to the subject too; it becomes known that the soul


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 is immortal, that its nature is to have a pure existence, but not as yet to exist in the strict sense as this purity—that is, not as yet to exist as spirituality. On the contrary, this essentiality still strictly implies that the mode of existence continues to be sensuous immediacy, which, however, is merely accidental.

Immortality, therefore, means that the soul which is at home with itself or self-contained, as being something essential, is at the same time existing. Essence without existence is a mere abstraction; essentiality, the Notion, must be thought of as existing. Thus realisation, too, belongs to essentiality, but the form of the realisation is still sensuous existence, sensuous immediacy. Now transmigration of souls means that the soul still persists after death, but in another mode of existence, a sensuous mode. The soul being still abstractly conceived of as Being-within-itself, the form assumed is a matter of indifference. The spirit is not known as concrete, is only abstract essentiality, and thus determinate Being; the phenomenal appearance is merely the immediate sensuous shape, which is contingent, and is human or animal form. Human beings, animals, the whole world of life, become the many-hued garment of colourless individuality. Being-within-itself, the Eternal, has as yet no content, and therefore, too, no standard for form.

The idea that man passes into such forms, is accordingly united with the thought of morality, of desert. That is to say, the relation of man to the principle, to nothingness, implies that in order to be happy he must labour by means of continuous speculation, meditation, musing upon himself, to become like to this principle, and the holiness of man consists in uniting himself in this silence with God. The loud voices of worldly life must become mute; the silence of the grave is the element of eternity and holiness. In the cessation of all movement or motion of the body, all movement of the soul, in this extinction of oneself happiness consists. And when a man has reached this


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 stage of perfection, then there is no more change, his soul has no longer to fear transmigration, for he is identical with the god Foe. The soul is exalted into the region of nothingness, and thus delivered from bondage to external sensuous form.

In so far, however, as a man has not, by renunciation, by sinking into himself, attained to this felicity—though this latter is indeed in him, for his spirit is this potentiality—he is still in need of duration, and so of bodily existence too, and in this way the idea of metempsychosis takes its origin.

3. It is here, accordingly, that the aspects of power and of magic combine with this idea, and the religion of Being-within-itself runs out into the wildest superstition. The theoretical relation, owing to the fact that it is, properly speaking, inherently empty, is reversed and changes into the practical one of magic. The mediation of priests here comes in, and they represent at once the Higher, and the power above the forms or shapes which man assumes. The adherents of Foe are in this respect superstitious to the utmost degree. They believe that man passes into all possible forms, and that the priests are those who, living in the supersensuous world, determine the form which the soul is to take on, and are therefore able to keep it from assuming ill-omened shapes. A missionary tells a story of a dying Chinese who had sent for him, and complained that a Bonze (these are the priests, those who know, to whom is known what is happening in the other world) had told him that just as he was now in the service of the Emperor, so would he remain in it after death likewise; his soul would pass into an imperial post-horse; he must then perform his duties faithfully, not kick, not bite, not stumble, and content himself with a small amount of food.

The dogma of metempsychosis is also the point at which the simple worship of Being-within-itself


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 itself into an idolatry of the most varied description. In this dogma we have the foundation and origin of that infinite multitude of idols and images which are everywhere worshipped where Foe holds sway. Four-footed beasts, birds, creeping things, in a word, the lowest forms of animal life, have temples and are worshipped, because the god inhabits each one of them in his new births, and any and every animal body may be inhabited by the soul of man.

III.

NATURAL RELIGION IN TRANSITION TO THE RELIGION OF FREEDOM.

As regards its necessity, this transition is based upon the fact that the truth which in the preceding stages is potentially present as the foundation is here actually brought forward and posited. In the Religion of Phantasy and that of Being-within-itself, this subject, this subjective self-consciousness, is identical, though in an immediate manner, with that substantial unity which is called Brahma or characterless nothingness. This One is now conceived of as unity determined within itself, as implicitly subjective unity, and at the same time as this unity in its character as implicitly totality. If the unity be inherently determined as subjective, it then contains the principle of Spirituality in itself, and it is this principle which unfolds itself in the religions which are based upon this transition.

Further, in the Indian religion the One, the unity of Brahma, and determinateness, the many Powers of the Particular, this appearance of differences, stood in a relation to each other which implied that at one time the differences were held to be independent, and at another that they had disappeared and were submerged in unity. The dominant and universal characteristic was the


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 of origination and passing away; the alternation of the annulling and absorption of the particular Powers in the unity, and of procession out of unity. In the Religion of Being-within-itself this alternation was indeed brought to rest in so far as the particular differences fell back into the unity of nothingness, but this unity was empty and abstract, and the truth is, on the contrary, the unity which is concrete within itself and is totality, so that even that abstract unity, together with the element of difference, enters into the true unity in which the differences are posited as annulled, as ideal, negative, and non-self-subsisting, but at the same time as preserved.

The unfolding of the moments of the Idea, the self-differentiation of the thought of absolute Substance, was therefore hitherto defective, in so far as the forms or shapes lost themselves on the one hand in hard fixity, while on the other it was merely by flight that unity was reached, or to put it otherwise, the unity was merely the disappearance of the differences. Now, however, the reflection of manifoldness into itself appears, implying that Thought itself contains determination within itself, so that it is self-determination, and determination has only worth and substantive content in so far as it is reflected into this unity. Together with this, the notion of freedom, objectivity, is posited, and the divine Notion thus becomes the unity of the finite and infinite. The Thought which only exists within itself, pure Substance, is the Infinite, and the finite, in accordance with the thought-determination, is the many gods; while the unity is negative unity, abstraction, which submerges the Many in this One. But this last has gained nothing by this; it is undetermined as before, and the finite is only affirmative outside of the Infinite, not within it, and hence so soon as it is affirmative it is finitude which is devoid of rationality. But now the finite, the determinate in general is taken up into infinitude, the form is commensurate with the substance, the infinite form is identical


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 with the substance, which determines itself within itself, and is not merely abstract Power.

The other equally essential determination is that with this the separation of the empirical self-consciousness from the Absolute, from the content of the Highest, for the first time takes place, that here for the first time God attains true objectivity. At the former stages it is the empirical self-consciousness immersed in itself which is Brahma, this abstraction within self, or, in other words, the Highest is present as a human being. Thus substantial unity is still inseparable from the subject, and in so far as it is still something imperfect, is not as yet in its very nature subjective unity; it still has the subject outside of it. The objectivity of the Absolute, the consciousness of its independence in its own right, is not present.

Here this breach between subjectivity and objectivity takes place for the first time, and it is here that objectivity for the first time properly deserves the name of God; and we have this objectivity of God here because this content has determined itself by its own act to be potentially concrete totality. The meaning of this is that God is a Spirit, that God is the Spirit in all religious.

When, as happens with special frequency at the present day, we hear it said that subjective consciousness forms a part of religion, the idea expressed is a correct one. We have here the instinct that subjectivity belongs to religion. But people have an idea that the spiritual can exist as an empirical subject, which then as empirical consciousness can have a natural thing for its God, and this means that spirituality can come into consciousness only, and God, too, as a natural existence, can be an object for this consciousness.

Thus, on the one side, we have God as a natural existence; but God is essentially Spirit, and this is the absolute characteristic quality of religion in general, and


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 therefore the fundamental characteristic, the substantial basis, in every form of religion. The natural thing is presented in a human fashion, and also as personality, as spirit, as consciousness; but the deities of the Hindus are still superficial personifications—the personification by no means implies that the object, God, is known as Spirit. It is these particular objects, the sun, a tree, which are personified. The incarnations of the deities, too, have their place here; the particular objects have, however, an independence, and because they are particular and natural objects the independence is only a fictitious one.

But the Highest is Spirit, and it is from the empirical subjective spirit in the first instance that this spiritual determination and independence is derived, either where it gets a definite shape, or where Brahma has his existence in and through immersion of the subject in itself. Now, however, it is no longer the case that man is God or God is man—that God exists merely in an empiricohuman mode; on the contrary, God is truly objective in His own nature, is in His very Being totality, concretely determined in Himself, that is to say, known as being in His real nature subjective, and thus is He for the first time essentially an Object, and stands over against man in general.

The return to the thought that God appears as man, as God-man, we shall find later on; but it is here that this objectivity of God has its beginning.

Now if the Universal be conceived as determination of self within self, then it comes into opposition with what is Other than itself, and represents strife with the Other of itself. In the religion of Power there is no opposition, no strife, for the accidental has no value for Substance.

Power now determining itself by its own act, has not, indeed, these determinations as something finite. On the contrary, what is determined exists in its complete and


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 independent truth. By means of this, God is determined as the Good; goodness is not laid down as a predicate here, but He is simply the Good. In what has no determinate character there is neither good nor evil. The Good, on the other hand, is here the Universal, but with one purpose or end—a determinate character, which is commensurate with the universality in which it is.

To begin with, however, the self-determination of self is at this stage exclusive. Thus the Good comes into relation with what is Other, the Evil, and this relation is strife—dualism. Reconciliation, here a becoming or something that ought-to-be only, is not as yet thought of as in and pertaining to this Goodness itself.

Here it is at once posited as a necessary consequence that the strife comes to be known as a characteristic of Substance itself. The Negative is posited in Spirit itself, and this is compared with its affirmation, so that this comparison is present in felt experience, and constitutes pain, death. And here, finally, the strife, which dies away, is the wrestling of Spirit to come to itself, to attain to freedom.

From these fundamental determinations the following divisions of this transition stage result:—

1. The first determination is that of the Persian religion. Here the actual Being of the Good is still of a superficial kind, consequently it has a natural form, but a natural existence which is formless—Light.

2. The form of religion in which strife, pain, death itself actually appear in the Essence—the Syrian religion.

3. The struggling out of the strife, the going onward to the true destiny of free spirituality, the overcoming of evil, complete transition to the religion of free spirituality—the Egyptian religion.

Speaking generally, however, the characteristic common to these three forms of religion is the resumption of wild, unrestrained totality into concrete unity. This giddy whirl, in which the determinations of unity are


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 precipitated into externality and contingency, where out of unity, as out of Brahma, this wild notionless world of deities proceeds, and where the development, because it is not proportionate to the unity, breaks up into confusion—this state, devoid of anything to give it steadfastness, has now passed away.

This resumption into substantial unity, which is inherently subjective, has, however, two forms. The first form of resumption is that seen in the religion of the Parsees, and it takes place in a pure, simple manner. The other is the fermenting process, seen in the Syrian and Egyptian religions, where the fermentation of totality mediates itself into unity, and unity comes into existence in the strife of its elements.

1. The Religion of the Good or of Light.

(a.) Its notion or conception.

1. The resumption is as yet the pure simple one, but for that reason it is also abstract. God is known as the absolutely existent, which is determined within itself.

Here the determinate character is not an empirical, manifold one, but is just what is pure, universal, what is equal to itself; a determination of Substance, by which it ceases to be Substance, and begins to be subject. This unity, as self-determining, has a content, and that this content is what is determined by unity, and is in conformity with it, is the universal content, is what is called Good or the True; for those are only forms which belong to the further distinctions of knowing and willing, which in the highest form of subjectivity are but one truth, particularisations of this One truth.

The fact that this Universal is determined by the self-determination of Spirit, and by Spirit and for Spirit, is the side upon which it is Truth. In proportion as it is posited by Spirit, is a self-determination commensurate with its unity, is its own self-determination by which it


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 remains true to itself in its universality, and in consequence of which no other determinations present themselves unless that unity itself, is it the Good. It is therefore the true content which has objectivity, the Good, which is the same as the True. This Good is at the same time self-determination of the One, of absolute Substance, and in being such it directly remains absolute Power—the Good as absolute Power, Such is the determination of the content.

2. It is just in this determination of the Absolute, and in the fact that it is self-determination and the Good, in which even concrete life is able to behold its affirmative root, and to become conscious of itself in a true manner, that there lies the connection with the concrete, with the world, with concrete empirical life generally. Out of this Power all things proceed. We had this determination of the Absolute in the foregoing forms, where it implied that this mode of self-determination, as a mode of determination, contains abstract determination, is not self-determination, what has returned into itself, what remains in identity, the True and Good in the universal sense, but is the act of determination generally. Power, as such, is neither good nor wise; it has no end in view, but is merely determined as Being and Not-being; it is characterised by wildness, by modes of acting savouring of madness in fact. For this reason Power is intrinsically what is without determination.

This moment of Power is also present, but as something subordinated. Thus it is concrete life, the world in manifold existence; but that which is all-important is that in the Good, as self-determination, is contained this absolute characteristic, namely, the connection of the Good with the concrete world.

Subjectivity, particularity generally, is in this Substance, in the One itself, which is the absolute subject. This element, which belongs to the particular life, this determinateness is at the same time posited in the Absolute


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 itself, and in being so is an affirmative co-relation or connection of the Absolute, of the good and true, of the Infinite with that which is called the finite.

The affirmative connection in the earlier forms of religion exists in part only in this pure absorption, in which the subject says, “I am Brahma,” but it is an absolutely abstract connection, which only exists by means of this stupefaction, this relinquishment of all concrete actuality of Spirit, by means of negation. This affirmative connection is merely, as it were, a simple thread; for the rest, it is the abstract negative, this sacrifice, this self-immolation; that is to say, instead of connection there is merely flight from the concrete.

But with this affirmative connection, where determinate existence is taken up into universality, it is stated that things themselves are good; the Good is present Substance in them, and that which is good is their life, their affirmative Being. So far as they remain good, they belong to this realm of the Good; they are from the very first received into favour; it is not that a part only are these twice-born, as in India. On the contrary, the finite is composed of what is good, and is good. And, indeed, good is taken in the proper sense, and is understood with reference to an external end, an external comparison. That is in accordance with an end which is good for something, so that the end lies outside of the object. Here, on the other hand, good is to be understood as meaning that it is the Universal determined within itself. Good is so determined within itself; the particular things are good, they serve their own purpose, are adequate to themselves, not merely to an Other. The Good is not for them a “Beyond,”—Brahma again.

3. This Good, although it is indeed subjective itself, is inherently determined as Good, and is commensurate with substantial unity, with Universality itself, yet this determination is itself still abstract. The Good is concrete within itself, and yet this determinate existence of


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 concrete Being is itself still abstract. In order that the Good be not abstract, there must be the development of form, the positing of the moments of the Notion. In order to exist as rational Idea, to be known as Spirit, its determinations, the negative element, the distinctions as representing its powers must be posited, known, by means of the thought in it.

The Good may be made use of in various ways, or, to put it otherwise, human beings have good intentions. Here the question presents itself, “What is good?” There is a demand for further definition and explanation of the Good. Here we still have Good as abstract, as something one-sided, and consequently as an absolute antithesis to an Other, and this Other is Evil. In this simple relation the negative is not as yet comprehended within what rightly belongs to it.

We thus have two principles, the well-known Oriental dualism—the realms of good and evil. This is the grand opposition which has here reached this universal abstraction. In the varied character of the deities previously referred to, there is undoubtedly manifoldness, difference; but the fact that this duality has become the universal principle is quite another thing, for the difference confronts itself as this dualism.

The Good is indeed the True, the Powerful, but is at war with Evil in such a way that Evil stands over against it as an absolute principle, and remains standing over against it. The evil ought, it is true, to be overcome, to be equated, but what ought to be is not. The ought-to-be, the ideal, is a force which cannot realise itself; it is a certain weakness and impotence.

This dualism, understood as distinction or difference in its entire universality, is the interest alike of religion and philosophy, and it is, in fact, when put in terms of Thought that this opposition acquires its universality. At the present time dualism is a form of thought too; but when we speak of dualism, the forms referred to are


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 of a weak and slight kind. The modern antithesis of finite and infinite is just that of Ahriman and Ormazd—it is just the same Manicheism as we have here.

From the moment that we take the finite as independent, so that the infinite and finite stand opposite to one another in such a way that the infinite has no part with the finite, and the finite cannot pass over to the infinite, then that is the same thing as this dualism, only that when we so conceive of the relation, we have not the intention of forming, nor the heart to form a conception of these opposites in accordance with their entire content.

The finite when, in its further determination, it asserts itself as finite over against the infinite, the Universal, and in so doing declares itself opposed to the infinite, is the Evil. We find accordingly that some stop short at this standpoint, which is marked by an utter absence of thought, and in accordance with which a valid existence is allowed both to the finite and the infinite. But God is only one principle, one power, and the finite, and for that very reason Evil, has no true independent existence.

But further, Good, by virtue of its universality, has moreover a natural mode of determinate existence, a mode of existence for an Other, namely, Light, which is pure manifestation. As the Good, that which is self-identical or commensurate with itself, is subjectivity in its pure identity with itself in the spiritual sphere, so is Light this abstract subjectivity in the sensuous sphere. Space and time are the primary abstractions in the sphere of externality or mutual exclusion, but the concrete physical element in its universality is Light. If, therefore, the essentially Good, because of its abstract character, comes to have the form of immediateness, and consequently of naturalness (for immediateness is the natural), then this immediate Goodness, which has not as yet purified itself and raised itself to the form of absolute spirituality, is Light. For Light is in the natural world


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 pure manifestation, determination of self by self, but in an entirely simple, universal manner.

If Brahma had to be represented in a sensuous fashion, he could only be represented as abstract space. Brahma has not as yet, however, the force within himself to be independently represented, but has as his realisation the empirical consciousness of man.

The fact that the Good at which we have arrived is still supposed to have essentially a natural form, although certainly it is nature in the pure form of Light, presents a certain difficulty. But Nature cannot possibly be left out by Spirit; it essentially belongs to Spirit.

God, too, as inherently concrete, as pure Spirit, is at the same time essentially Creator and Lord of nature. Thus the Idea in its Notion, God in His essential Being itself, must posit this reality, this external existence which we call Nature. The moment of naturalness, therefore, cannot be dispensed with, only it exists here as yet in an abstract form—in this immediate unity with the Spiritual, the Good, just because the Good is as yet this abstraction.

The Good contains determinateness within itself, and in determinateness is the root of natural existence. We say, “God creates the world.” Creation is this subjectivity to which determinateness in general pertains. It is in this activity or subjectivity that the essential character of nature lies, and indeed in the more definite relation which implies that that nature is something created. This does not, however, as yet exist here. What is present here is abstract determinateness.

This determinateness has essentially the form of nature generally, of Light, and of immediate unity with the Good; for the Immediate is itself just the Abstract, because determinateness is merely this universal, undeveloped determinateness.

Light, accordingly, has darkness standing over against it. In Nature these two characteristics are separate from one another in this fashion. This is the impotence of


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 nature, namely, that light and its negation lie side by side, although, indeed, light is the power to drive away darkness. This determination in God is itself as yet that element of impotence which, because of its abstraction, is not as yet able to contain and endure the opposition, the contradiction within itself, but has the Evil alongside of it. Light is the Good and the Good is light; this is the indivisible unity which we have here.

But light is in conflict with darkness, with evil, which it is to overcome, though ideally only, for it does not actually succeed in doing this.

Light is an infinite expansion, it is as rapid as Thought; but in order that its manifestation be real, it must strike upon something that is dark. Nothing is made manifest by pure light; only in this Other does definite manifestation make its appearance, and with this, Good appears in opposition to Evil. This manifestation is a determining but not as yet concrete development of determination; the concreteness of determination is therefore outside of it, because of its abstraction it has its determination in the Other. Without the opposition Spirit does not exist, and in the development of Spirit the point of importance is merely as to the position this opposition assumes relatively to mediation and to the original unity.

Thus the Good in its universality has a natural form, namely, this pure manifestation of nature, Light. The Good is the universal determinateness of things. Since it is thus abstract subjectivity, the moment of particularity or singularity, the moment, the mode, by which it is for Other, is itself as yet in sensuous perception something externally present, which, however, may come to be adequate to the content, for all particularity is taken up into the Universal; particularity of this more precise kind, in accordance with which it is the mode of perception, the mode of immediateness, is then capable of seeming adequate to the content. Brahma, for example, is merely abstract thought; looked upon in a sensuous


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 way, he would, as has been already stated, correspond merely with the perception of space, a sensuous universality of perception which is itself merely abstract. Here, on the contrary, the substantial element is commensurate with the form, and the latter is then physical universality—light, which has darkness over against it. Air, breath, &c., are also determinations which are physical, but they are not in this way the Ideal itself, are not universal individuality, subjectivity. It is in light which manifests itself that we have the moment of self-determination, of individuality, of subjectivity. Light appears as light generally, as universal light, and then as nature in a particular specific form; nature in the form of special objects reflected into itself as the essential element of particular things.

Light must not here be understood as meaning the sun. It may indeed be said that the sun is the most prominent light, but it stands beyond and above us as a particular body, as a special individual object. The Good, the light, on the contrary, has within itself the root of subjectivity, but only the root; accordingly, it is not posited as thus individual, existing apart by itself; and thus light is to be taken as subjectivity, as the soul of things.

(b.) This religion as it actually exists.

This Religion of Light or of the immediate Good is the religion of the ancient Parsis, founded by Zoroaster. There still exist some communities who belong to this religion in Bombay and on the shores of the Black Sea, in the neighbourhood of Baku, where those naphtha springs are specially frequent, in the accidental proximity of which some have imagined they find an explanation of the fact that the Parsis have chosen fire as an object of worship. From Herodotus and other Greek authors we derive some information regarding this religion, but it is only in later times that a more accurate knowledge of it has been arrived at by the discovery of the principal and


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 books (Zend-Avesta) of that people by the Frenchman Anquetil du Perron: these books are written in the ancient Zend language, a sister language to Sanscrit.

Light, which is worshipped in this religion, is not a symbol of the Good, an image or figure by which the Good is represented; it might, on the contrary, just as well be said that the Good is the symbol of light. Neither of the two is outward sign or symbol, but they are directly identical.

Here among the Parsis worship makes its appearance. Substantiality here exists for the subject in its particularity: man as a particular form of the Good stands over against the universal Good, over against light in its pure, as yet undisturbed, manifestation, which the Good as natural concrete existence is.

The Parsis have also been called fire-worshippers. This designation is to a certain degree incorrect, for the Parsis do not direct their worship to fire as devouring material fire, but only to fire as light, which as the truth of the material appears in an outward form.

The Good as an object, as something having a sensuous shape, which corresponds with the content which is as yet abstract, is Light. It has essentially the signification of the Good, the Righteous; in human form it is known as Ormazd, but this form is as yet a superficial personification here. Personification exists, that is to say, so long as the form as representing the content is not as yet inherently developed subjectivity. Ormazd is the Universal, which in an external form acquires subjectivity; he is light, and his kingdom is the realm of light.

The stars are lights appearing singly. What appears being something particular, natural, there at once springs up a difference between that which appears and that