at the same time, however, subject too, and that represents a further stage. As man has personality, the characteristic of subjectivity, personality, spirit, absolute spirit, enters into God. This is a higher characteristic, but Spirit nevertheless remains Substance, is the One Substance notwithstanding.
This abstract Substance, which is the ultimate principle of the philosophy of Spinoza, this Substance which is thought of, which is only for thought, cannot be the content of the religion of a people, cannot be the faith of a concrete spirit. Spirit is concrete; it is only abstract thought which remains in one-sided determinateness of this kind, in that of Substance.
The concrete spirit supplies the deficiency, and this deficiency is that subjectivity is wanting, that is to say, spirituality or the spiritual element. Here at the stage of natural religion, however, this spirituality does not yet exist as such, is not yet thought-out spirituality, universal spirituality, but sensuous, immediate spirituality; here it is a man, as sensuous, external, immediate spirituality, and therefore in the form of the spiritual life of a definite human being, of an empirical, individual consciousness. Now if this man remains in contrast with this Substance, with the inherently universal Substance, then it must be remembered that man as living substantiality is really this inherent substantial reality in himself, which is determined by his bodily existence; it must be possible to think that this life force is in a substantial way active life within him. This point of view contains universal Substantiality in an actual form.
Here the idea presents itself that a man is universal Substance in his act of meditation, when he is occupied with himself, when he is absorbed in himself; not merely in his active life, but in his absorption in self, in the centre of the νους, of the νους posited as the centre, but in such a way that the νους is not conscious of itself in its determination and development.
