Thus, then, beginning with the emblematical representations of the fine arts, and developing the idea through several other spheres of its manifestation, I have carried the symbolical significance of human life up to the highest hieroglyphic of all existence. And as in the three previous Lectures I have considered the eternal Word, simply and principally in a scientific point of view, as the fundamental law of truth, it now remains for me to exhibit it as the word which shall solve all difficulties in the problem of human existence, and shall prove an unerring guide in the conflict of life and in all its most important relations and perplexities. And to this subject the three last and concluding Lectures will be devoted. And in these we shall consider all this in its reference to the external and public life of man in society and the state. For not only does it hold true of the higher pursuits and inmost being of individuals, but it has also a universal application; for this highest of all hieroglyphics, which is the beginning of a new life, forms also the foundation of the state in its sacred character. And because the application of Christian truth and of the fundamental idea of Christianity is in general so greatly mistaken, I have thought it necessary to remount somewhat higher in my investigations, to draw from a deeper source, and to connect them with a higher principle, in order to arrive more steadily and more certainly at the result which I had in view. And this result may be thus summed up: The Christian state is nothing less than symbolical, and even thereby historically sanctified--whereas the mere polity of nature or that of reason, which, however artistical and consummate in its constitution, remains all the while false and unsanctified, is either purely dynamical or else absolute.