§ 170. (1) A child has as yet no definite religious feeling. He is still only a possibility capable of manifold determinations. But, since he is a spirit, the essence of religion is active in him, though as yet in an unconscious form. The substance of spirit attests its presence in every individual, through his mysterious impulse toward the absolute and towards intercourse with God. This is the initiatory stage of natural religion, which must not be confounded with the religion which makes nature the object of worship (fetichism, &c.) § 171. (2) But while the child lives into this in his internal life, he comes in contact with definite forms of religion, and will naturally, through the mediation of the family, be introduced to some one of them. His religious feeling takes now a particular direction, and he accepts religion in one of its historical forms. This positive religion meets the precise want of the child, because it brings into his consciousness, by means of teaching and sacred rites, the principal elements which are found in the nature of religion. § 172. (3) In contradistinction to the natural basis of religious feeling, all historical religions rest on the authoritative basis of revelation from God to man. They address themselves to the imagination, and offer a system of objective forms of worship and ceremonies. But spirit, as eternal, as self-identical, cannot forbear as thinking activity to subject the traditional religion to criticism and to compare it as a phenomenal existence. From this criticism arises a religion which satisfies the demands of the reason, and which, by means of insight into the necessity of the historical process, leads to the exercise of a genuine toleration towards its many-sided forms. This religion mediates between the unity of the thinking consciousness and the religious content, while this content, in the history of religious feeling, appears theoretically as dogma, and practically as the command of an absolute and incomprehensible authority. It is just as simple as the unsophisticated natural religious feeling, but its simplicity is at the same time master of itself. It is just as specific in its determinations as the historical religion, but its determinateness is at the same time universal, since it is worked out by the thinking reason.