[p. 281]
|281| which, not worthy of the essence, is without thoroughness and depth, where the deep is the unknown fate. But absolute religion is the deep that has stepped forth into the light of day – this deep is the I – it is the concept, the absolute pure power.
(In it, then, spirit is reconciled with its world – spirit as existing is its organisation and coming-to-be through the estates, determinate character, and determinate duty; each self has a restricted purpose, and likewise limited doing, – the knowing of itself as essence – in right and duty – is, as pure essence and pure knowing, empty, – as filled, a limited manifoldness – and immediate actuality a likewise singular thing. – Morality is the elevation above the estate, in its doing, to bring itself and the doing of its estate further; – to do something for the universal –)
But the government stands above all – spirit which knows itself as universal essence and universal actuality; – the absolute self – in religion each raises himself to this intuition of himself as [a] universal self – His nature, his estate, sinks away like a dream image, like a distant island appearing at the edge of the horizon as a little cloud of haze – he is equal to the prince – it is the knowing of himself as spirit – he counts for as much before God as any other. It is the externalization of his whole sphere, of his whole existing world, – not that externalization which is only form, culture, and whose content is again sensuous existence – but the universal one of the whole of actuality; this externalization gives it back to itself as something perfect –
But both realms, of actuality and of heaven, thus still come to lie apart – Beyond this world spirit is reconciled only with itself, not in its present – If it is satisfied in this, then it is not spirit raising itself above its existence; it is to be shaken in this, and it is shaken in it through war and need and flees out of existence into
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