A. NATURAL RELIGION

[[Translator's comments: The arrangement of the analysis of Religion and the divisions into the various subsections are, as indicated in the preceding note (p. 683), determined by the general development of experience. That development is from the immediate through mediation to the fusion of immediacy and mediation. The stages of the development of experience are Consciousness, Self-consciousness, Reason, the latter leading to its highest level--finite Spiritual existence. The development of Religion follows these various ways in which objects are given in experience, and the three chief divisions of Religion are determined accordingly: Natural Religion is religion at the level of Consciousness; Art, Religion at the level of Self-consciousness; Revealed Religion is Religion at the level of Reason and Spirit. Each of these is again subdivided, and the subdivision follows more or less closely the various subdivisions of these three ultimate levels of experience--Consciousness, etc. Thus, in Natural Religion, we have Religion at the level of Sense-certainty--"Light": Religion at the level of Perception--"Life": and Religion at the level of Understanding--the reciprocal relation constituted by the "play of forces" appears as the relation of the "Artificer" to his own product.

The general principle is not worked out in detail, with the same obviousness, in the case of the other two primary types of Religion--Art and Revealed Religion. But the same general method of development is pursued in these cases.

The historical material before the mind of the writer is, as might be expected, the various religions which have historically appeared amongst mankind. These religions are treated, however, as illustrations of principles dominating the religious consciousness m general, rather than as merely historical phenomena.

With the succeeding argument should be read Hegel's Philosophy of Religion, Part II, Sections I and II, and Part III.]]

NATURAL RELIGION(1)

SPIRIT knowing spirit is consciousness of itself; and is to itself in the form of objectivity. It is; and is at the same time self-existence (Fersichsein). It is for itself; it is the aspect of self-consciousness, and is so in contrast to the aspect of its consciousness, the aspect by which it relates itself to itself as object. In its consciousness there is the opposition and in consequence the determinateness of the form in which it appears to itself and knows itself. It is with this determinateness of shape that we have alone to do in considering religion; for its essential unembodied principle, its pure notion, has already come to light. The distinction of consciousness and self-consciousness, however, falls at the same time within this notion. The form or shape of religion does not contain the existence of spirit in the sense of its being nature detached and free from thought, nor in the sense of its being thought detached from existence. The shape assumed by religion is existence contained and preserved in thought as well as a something thought which is consciously existent.

It is by the determinate character of this form, in which spirit knows itself, that one religion is distinguished from another. But we have at the same time to note that the systematic exposition of this knowledge about itself, in terms of this individual specific character, does not as a fact exhaust the whole nature of an actual religion. The series of different religions, which will come before us, just as much sets forth again merely the different aspects of a single religion, and indeed of every single religion, and the imagery, the conscious ideas, which seem to mark off one concrete religion from another, make their appearance in each. All the same the diversity must also be looked at as a diversity of religion. For while spirit lives in the dis- tinction of its consciousness and its self-consciousness, the process it goes through finds its goal in the transcendence of this fundamental distinction and in giving the form of self-consciousness to the given shape which is object of consciousness. This distinction, however, is not eo ipso transcended by the fact that the shapes, which that consciousness contains, have also the moments of self in them, and that God is presented as self-consciousness. The consciously presented self is not the actual concrete self. In order that this, like every other more specific determination of the shape, may in truth belong to this shape, it has partly to be put into this shape by the action of self-consciousness, and partly the lower determination must show itself to be cancelled and transcended and comprehended by the higher. For what is consciously presented (vorgestellt) only ceases to be something "presented" and alien to spirit's knowledge, by the self having produced it, and so viewing the determination of the object as its own determination, and hence seeing itself in that object. By this operation, the lower determination [that of being something "presented"] has at once vanished; for doing anything is a negative process which is carried through at the expense of something else. So far as that lower determination still continues to appear, it has withdrawn into the condition of unessentiality: just as, on the other hand, where the lower still predominates, while the higher is also present, the one coexists in a self-less way alongside of the other. While, therefore, the various ideas falling within a single religion no doubt exhibit the whole course taken by the forms of religion, the character of each is determined by the particular unity of consciousness and self-consciousness; that is to say, by the fact that the self-consciousness has taken into itself the determination belonging to the object of consciousness, has, by its own action, made that determination altogether its own, and knows it to be the essential one as compared with the others.

The truth of belief in a given determination of the religious spirit shows itself in this, that the actual spirit is constituted after the same manner as the shape in which spirit beholds itself in religion; thus e.g. the incarnation of God, which is found in Eastern religion, has no truth, because the concrete actual spirit of this religion is without the reconciliation this principle implies.

It is not in place here to return from the totality of specific determinations back to the individual determination, and show in what shape the plenitude of all the others is contained within it and within its particular form of religion. The higher form, when put back under a lower, is deprived of its significance for self-conscious spirit, belongs to spirit merely in a superficial way, and is for it at the level of presentation. The higher form has to be considered in its own peculiar significance, and dealt with where it is the principle of a particular religion, and is certified and approved by its actual spirit.