sciousness gives outward form to the inwardly abstract or to the external, which is at first something having immediate Being, and posits it as concrete. In this process the natural loses its independence and is reduced to being the outward sign of the indwelling spirit, in such a way that this latter alone is essentially allowed to appear.
The freedom of Spirit here is not yet the infinite freedom of thought; the spiritual essences are not yet in the element of Thought. Did man exercise thought in such a way that pure thought constituted the basis, there would be for him only one God. Just as little, however, does man come upon his essential beings as present immediate natural forms; on the contrary, he brings them forward into existence for idea or figurative thought, and this bringing of them forward as representing the middle stage between pure thought and the immediate perception of Nature, is imagination or fancy.
In this way the gods are formed by human imagination, and they originate in a finite fashion, being produced by the poet, by the muse. They have this finitude essentially in themselves, because so far as the content is concerned they are finite, and in virtue of their individuality have no connection with each other. They are not discovered by the human mind as they are in their essentially existent rational content, but in so far as they are gods. They are made, invented, but are not fictitious. They certainly come forth out of the human imagination in contrast to what actually exists, but they do this as essential forms, and this product of the mind is at the same time recognised as being what is essential.
It is in this sense we are to understand the remark of Herodotus that Homer and Hesiod made their gods for the Greeks. The same might be said of every priest and wise “ancient” who was capable of understanding and explaining the presence in the natural of the divine and of the essentially existing powers.
