Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/182

 ($$\gamma$$.) If we look at religious knowledge more closely, it shows itself not only to be the simple relation of myself to the object, but to be knowledge of a much more concrete kind. This purely simple relation, the knowledge of God, is inner movement, or to put it more accurately, it is a rising up or elevation to God. We describe religion as being essentially this passing over, or transition from one content to another, from the finite to the absolute, infinite content.

This transition, in which the characteristics peculiar to mediation are definitely pronounced, is of a twofold kind. In its first form it is a passing over from finite things, from things of the world, or from the finiteness of our consciousness, and from this finiteness in general which we call "ourselves,"—"I," this particular subject—to the infinite, to this infinite more strictly defined as God. The second mode of the transition has aspects of a more abstract kind, which are related in accordance with a deeper, more abstract antithesis. Here the one side is determined as God, the infinite generally, as something known by us; the other side, to which we pass over, is, to use a general term, determinateness as something objective, something existent. In the former transition what the two sides have in common is Being, and this content of both sides is set down as finite and infinite; in the latter what the two have in common is the infinite, and this is stated in the form of the subjective and objective.

We have now to consider the relation of knowledge of God within itself. Knowledge is relation within itself, it is mediated; either mediated through what is Other than itself or within itself, but it is mediation, because in it the reference of myself to an object takes place—a reference to God, who is an "Other."

I and God are different from one another; if both were One, there would then be immediate relation, free from any mediation; relationless unity, that is to say,