Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/231

and still more are plants and animals, life in fact. If we know of no higher characteristic of God than that of universal Being, of universal life, universal substance, and the like, then such forms of existence certainly contain this so-called divine Essence, and contain it as a Universal which is devoid of Spirit. In like manner, if the individual self-consciousness be defined as a natural simple Thing, which is ordinarily understood as being the definition of the soul, then from the pantheistic point of view it too is taken as a divine existence. But so too, although self-consciousness be of the true kind, understood not indeed as a natural Thing, yet as a reality so far as immediateness is concerned so that it exists as knowing immediately, just as it is in accordance with its purely original character what thinks, and even although in this sense it be thus taken as a divine reality,—it also is still conceived of from that pantheistic point of view. And from such a definition of individual self-consciousness it is not possible for the pantheistic idea to free itself. “I am: I am thinking:” this form of immediate Being is regarded from the pantheistic point of view as that which constitutes the ultimate definition and the persistent form of what thinks. Although the latter be also termed Spirit, this remains a meaningless expression, since that “I” which was merely Being, that knowledge which is merely immediate—knowing immediately anything whatever, including even God—is nothing but Spirit devoid of Spirit. The two assertions that man can only know God in an immediate manner, and that man as he is originally and by nature is good, have their source in this conceiving of Spirit as devoid of Spirit. Or conversely, if these two assertions be made, it follows that Spirit is to be taken only as the existent “I,” and this existent “I” as the ultimate and true determination of self-consciousness, and even as absolute eternal Being. Spirit becomes Spirit as concrete freedom only, as something which allows its naturalness or immediateness to