unable to be presented itself as individual entity; because otherwise it would simply appear as one among many individuals, and would stand above them. For this reason it remains without form and individuality, and is in this abstraction merely necessity and nothing more; with which gods no less than men, when they differentiate themselves as separate from one another, contend. And thus they give effect to their individual power condemned though it be to limitations, and would fain exalt themselves over the bounds and warrant of Fate, though they are, in fact, its subjects, and are forced to hearken to all that unalterably befalls them. 2. THE DISSOLUTION OF THE GODS THROUGH THEIR ANTHROPOMORPHISM For the reason, then, that the principle of self-determinate Necessity[197] does not appertain to the particular gods, does not supply in other words the content of their self-determination, and only floats over them as an undefined abstraction, the aspect of their insularity as individuals has consequently free play and is unable to escape from Destiny, is moreover at liberty to branch out into the external fabric of the human condition, into the finite consistency of anthropomorphism, possibilities which convert the gods into the reverse of that condition which truly constitutes the notion of what they are essentially and in virtue of their divine nature. The overthrow of these gods of beauty is consequently quite inevitably brought about for art through their own nature. The human consciousness is at last quite unable to find repose in them, and is fain compelled to take leave of them. And, moreover, if we look more closely we shall find that the mode and type of Greek anthropomorphism supplies us with a general example of how the gods vanish away from the faiths of religion no less than those of poetry. (_a_) Spiritual individuality here makes its appearance in the human form, it is true, as Ideal; but for all that it is in the immediately visible, that is, the bodily presence, not within humanity in all its essential explication, under the mode in which it is conscious of itself in its own self-conscious world as distinct from God, while in the same breath it annuls the distinction, and is, by its own act, as one with God, essentially infinite and absolute self-consciousness.