, the union of the lyric and the epic.

(2) _Philosophy of Religion_.--The withdrawal from outer sensibility into
the inner spirit, begun in romantic art, especially in poetry, is completed
in religion. In religion the nations have recorded the way in which they
represent the substance of the world; in it the unity of the infinite and
the finite is felt, and represented through imagination. Religion is not
merely a feeling of piety, but a thought of the absolute, only not in the
form of thinking. Religion and philosophy are materially the same, both
have God or the truth for their object, they differ only in form--religion
contains in an empirical, symbolic form the same speculative content which
philosophy presents in the adequate form of the concept. Religion is
developing knowledge as it gradually conquers imperfection. It appears
first as definite religion in two stadia, natural religion and the religion
of spiritual individuality, and finally attains the complete realization of
its concept in the absolute religion of Christianity.

Natural religion, in its lowest stage magic, develops in three forms--as
the religion of measure (Chinese), of phantasy (Indian or Brahmanical), and
of being in self (Buddhistic). In the Persian (Zoroastrian) religion of
light, the Syrian religion of pain, and the Egyptian religion of enigma, is
prepared the way for the transformation into the religion of freedom. The
Greek solves the riddle of the Sphinx by apprehending himself as subject,
as man.

The religion of spiritual individuality or free subjectivity passes through
three stadia: the Jewish religion of sublimity (unity), the Greek religion
of beauty (necessity), the Roman religion of purposiveness (of the
understanding). In contrast to the Jewish religion of slavish obedience,
which by miracle makes known the power of the one God and the nullity of
nature, which has been "created" by his will, and the prosaic severity of
the Roman, which, in Jupiter and Fortuna, worships only the world-dominion
of the Roman people, the more cheerful art-religion of the Hellenes
reverences in the beautiful forms of the gods, the powers which man is
aware of in himself--wisdom, bravery, and beauty.

The Christian or revealed religion is the religion of truth, of freedom, of
spirit. Its content is the unity of the divine nature and the human, God
as knowing himself in being known of man+; the knowledge of God is God's
self-knowledge. Its fundament