find myself determined as against myself, or as distinguished from myself. That is to say, in this very feeling of mine I am driven by its content into contrast or opposition—in other words, to reflection and to the distinction of subject and object.
This transition to reflection is not peculiar to religious feeling only, but to human feeling generally. For man is Spirit, consciousness, idea; there is no feeling which does not contain in itself this transition to reflection. In every other feeling, however, it is only the inner necessity and nature of the process which impels to reflection, namely, the necessity whereby the Ego distinguishes itself from its determinate state. Religious feeling, on the contrary, contains in its content, in its very determinateness, not only the necessity but the reality of the opposition itself, and consequently contains reflection. For the substance or content of the religious relation is just the thought of the Universal, which is itself, indeed, reflection, and therefore the other moment of my empirical consciousness, and the relation of both. Therefore in religious feeling I am alienated from myself, for the Universal, the Thought which has an absolute existence, is the negation of my particular empirical existence, which appears in regard to it as a nullity which has its truth in the Universal only. The religious attitude is unity, but it involves the power of judgment or differentiation.[1] In feeling the moment of empirical existence, I feel the universal aspect, that of negation, as a determinateness which exists entirely outside of me; or, to put it otherwise, while I am in this last I feel myself estranged from myself in my empirical existence, I feel I am renouncing myself and negating my empirical consciousness.
Now the subjectivity which is contained in religious feeling, being empirical and particular, exists in feeling in the shape of some particular interest, or in some
- ↑ “Kraft des Urtheils.”
