Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/161

 On this account, then, idea is in a state of constant unrest between immediate sensuous perception on the one hand, and thought proper on the other. Its determinateness is of sensuous kind, derived from what is sensuous, but thought has introduced itself; in other words, the Sensuous becomes elevated into thought by the process of abstraction. But these two, the Sensuous and the Universal, do not interpenetrate one another thoroughly; thought has not as yet completely overcome the sensuous determinateness, and although the content of idea is also something universal, yet it is still encumbered with the determinateness of the Sensuous, and needs the form of the natural (Natürlichkeit). But it is not the less true that this moment of the Sensuous does not possess independent validity.

Thus there are many forms in religion, regarding which we know that they are not to be taken in their strict sense. For instance, “Son,” or “Begetting” is only a figure derived from a natural relation, regarding which we know quite well that it is not intended to be understood in its immediate sense, but that what is indicated is rather a relation which is only approximately the one here described, and that this sensuous relation has in it what corresponds most nearly to that relation which is taken in the strict sense in regard to God. And further, when we speak of the wrath of God, of His repentance, or His vengeance, we know at once that the words are not meant to be taken in the strict sense, but merely as implying resemblance, likeness. Then, too, we meet with figures worked out in detail. We hear, for instance, of a tree of knowledge of good and evil. With the eating of the fruit, it already begins to become doubtful whether what is said of this tree is to be taken strictly as a narrative as a historical truth—and so, too, of the eating—or whether this tree is not rather to be taken as a figure. When mention is made of a tree of knowledge of good and evil, such opposite elements are involved