and as having a merely natural character, not as absolute, infinite Spirit. In as far as this natural character is posited in Him, and He has it in Himself in an affirmative manner, He is indeed the Unity of this and the Spiritual; but in so far as the natural character is something permanent, the unity of the two is immediate also, a unity which indeed is merely natural, and not truly spiritual. As regards man, the body is just as much an affirmative ingredient as the soul if any one says he consists of body and soul; and as thus conceived, the unity of the two is also a natural immediate unity only.
Now, in worship, too, man is determined in the same way, as having an immediate natural character, or as being in the unfreedom of freedom. To say that man is simply naturally free (a definition which really contradicts itself) implies also that his relation to his object, his essence, his truth, is such a natural unity, and his faith, his worship, is therefore essentially an immediate relation, or an original state of reconciliation with his object. This is a characteristic of worship in all those religions in which the absolute essential nature of God is not as yet revealed. Here man in his freedom has not yet attained to freedom. Such, for instance, is heathen worship, which has no need of reconciliation. Here worship is already that which man represents to himself as the ordinary mode of life; he lives in this substantial unity, worship and life are not separated, and a world of absolute finitude has not as yet placed itself over against an infinitude. Thus a consciousness of their felicity prevails among the heathen, a consciousness that God is near to them as the God of the nation, of the State—the feeling that the gods are friendly toward them, and bestow upon them the enjoyment of all that is best. If Athene was known to the Athenians under this guise as their divine power, they knew themselves to be originally one with her, and knew the divine to be the spiritual power of their nation itself. At the first stage of the immediate unity of the finite and infinite,
