Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/131

 independent essential being, being in and for self, is, however, the truth of the Other as it appears in the form of the finite world, and as finite consciousness. The element or matter, the necessity of which we have considered, is therefore essentially the same, whether it presents itself in the Divine Idea as existing absolutely, or whether it appears as the wealth of the finite world; for the finite world has its true and ideal existence only in that world of the Idea.

The necessity which appeared to lie behind and outside of the religious standpoint, when the latter was deduced from the preceding stages of the natural and spiritual world, we now see to be inherent in itself, and it is thus to be set down as its own inner form and development. In passing on to this development, we accordingly begin again with the form of Appearance or phenomenal existence, and in the first place we shall consider Consciousness as it here appears in a condition of relation, and fashions and develops the forms of this relation until the inner necessity develops and attains completeness in the notion itself.

II.—The Forms of Religious Consciousness.

What we have first to consider in the sphere in which the religious spirit manifests itself is the diversity of form assumed by the religious attitude. These forms, being of a psychological kind, belong to the region of finite spirit. What is common to all these, to begin with, is the consciousness of God; and this is not consciousness only, but is, more correctly speaking, certainty too. The more definite form assumed by this certainty is faith—certainty, that is, so far as it is present in faith, or so far as this knowledge of God is feeling, and exists in feeling. This has reference to the subjective side.

In the second place, we have to consider the objective side, the mode of the content or object. The form in