Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/171

 just religion which is the true content, only in the form of idea or ordinary thought, and it is philosophy which must first supply substantial truth, nor has mankind had to wait for philosophy in order to receive the consciousness of truth.

III.—The Necessity and Mediation of the Religious Attitude in the Form of Thought.

That inner connection and absolute necessity into which the content of idea is transplanted in thought is nothing else but the Notion in its freedom, in such a form that all content comes to be determination of the Notion, and is harmonised with or equalised with the Ego itself. The determinateness is here absolutely my own; in it, Spirit has its own essential nature as object, and the given character, the authority and externality of the content, vanish for me.

Thought consequently gives to self-consciousness the absolute relation of freedom. Idea or ordinary conception still keeps within the sphere of outward necessity, since all its moments, while bringing themselves into relation with each other, do this without in any way yielding up their independence. The relation of these elements in thought, on the contrary, is that of ideality, and this means that no element stands apart or is independent of the rest, but each rather appears as something that is a show or semblance (Schein) in relation to the others. Thus every distinction, every definite element, is something transparent, not existing on its own account in a dark and impenetrable fashion. This implies that the objects distinguished are not independent, and do not offer resistance to each other, but are posited in their ideality. The relation or condition of the absence of freedom, both that of the content and of the subject, has now vanished, because we have now absolute correspondence of the content with the form. The content