Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/170

 way, so that the determinateness in me is pure simple determinateness. That is to say, I am the absolutely concrete Ego, thought determining itself in itself; I exist as the Notion. This is another mode of my being concrete; here I do not only seek satisfaction for my heart, but the Notion seeks satisfaction, and it is as compared with the Notion that the religious content in the mode of idea or ordinary thought keeps the form of externality. Although many a great and richly endowed nature, and many a profound intelligence has found satisfaction in religious truth, yet it is the Notion, this inherently concrete thought, which is not as yet satisfied, and which asserts itself to begin with as the impulse of rational insight. If the as yet indefinite expression, “reason, rational insight,” be not reduced merely to this, that something or other is certain for me as an external specific fact; if, on the contrary, thought have so determined itself that the object stands firm to me on its own basis, and is founded in itself, then it is the Notion which as universal thought differentiates itself in itself and in the differentiation remains identical with itself. Whatever further content in regard to the will or intelligence I may have in what is rational, the essential matter is always that such content should be known by me as founded in itself, that I have in it the consciousness of the Notion; that is to say, not conviction merely, certainty, and conformity with principles which are otherwise held to be true, and under which I subserve it, but that in it I have the truth as truth, in the form of truth—in the form of the absolutely concrete, and of that which absolutely and perfectly harmonises with itself.

And thus it is that idea melts into the form of thought, and it is this quality of form which philosophic knowledge imparts to truth. From this it is clear that nothing is further from the aim of philosophy than to overthrow religion, and to maintain forsooth that the content of religion cannot for itself be truth. On the contrary, it is