determined as universal, and should maintain myself, reckon myself as universal only. Now this is none other than the point of view of thinking reason, and religion itself is this action, this activity of the thinking reason, and of the man who thinks rationally,—who as individual posits himself as the Universal, and annulling himself as individual, finds his true self to be the Universal. Philosophy is in like manner thinking reason, only that this action in which religion consists appears in philosophy in the form of thought, while religion as, so to speak, reason thinking naively, stops short in the sphere of general ideas or ordinary thought.
The general characteristics, the more precise forms of thought belonging to this point of view, have now to be noticed.
It is said first of all that subjectivity relinquishes its individuality in the object in recognising an Objective in general. This object cannot be anything sensuous. I know the sensuous object; no doubt in sense the thing is for me something which persists objectively, but my freedom is not in it as yet. The untrue nature of the sensuous consciousness must be taken for granted here. The necessary determination is that this Objective as true, and affirmative, is determined as an universal. In this recognition of an Object, of an Universal, I renounce my finiteness, I renounce myself as this individual unit. What is valid for me is the Universal, and a universal would not exist if I were maintained as this individual unit. This is apparent, too, in immediate knowledge of God; I have a knowledge of the objectively universal, which has an absolute essential existence; but since there is only an immediate relation here, and reflection does not yet enter in, this Universal, this object of the Universal, is itself something merely subjective, to which that essential and independent objectivity is wanting. The reflection finally arrived at accordingly is only this, that these determinations are planted in feeling alone, and are locked up in
