The knowledge the subject has of the gods is not a knowledge of them merely as abstractions away beyond the sphere of reality. On the contrary, it is a knowledge which includes the knowledge of the concrete subjectivity of man himself as something essential, for the gods are likewise within him. Here we have not that negative relation, where the relation of the subject to what is above it, even if it is the highest form of relation, is merely the sacrifice, the negation of its consciousness. The powers here are friendly and gracious to men, they dwell in man’s own breast; man gives them reality, and knows their reality to be at the same time his own. The breath of freedom pervades this whole world, and constitutes the fundamental principle for this attitude of mind.
But the consciousness of the infinite subjectivity of man is still wanting, the consciousness that moral relations and absolute right attach to man as such, that man, just because he is self-consciousness, possesses in this formal infinitude the rights as well as the duties of the human race. Freedom, morality, is the substantial element in man, and to know this as the substantial element, and to posit in it his own substantiality, is what constitutes the value and the dignity of man. But it is the formal subjectivity, self-consciousness as such, the inherently infinite individuality, and not the merely natural and immediate individuality, which contains the possibility of that value, i.e., the real possibility, and the one on account of which the individual himself has infinite rights. Now, because in the natural morality of the untutored man the infinitude of formal subjectivity is not recognised, man as such does not attain to that absolute value according to which he has worth in and for himself, whatever be his inward qualifications, whether born in this or the other place, whether rich or poor, whether belonging to this people or to that. Freedom and morality have still a special, particular form, and the essential right of man is still
