Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/222

 an element in it, but a consciousness which is cancelled as fiinite; for the Other, which absolute Spirit knows, it itself is, and it is only absolute Spirit in knowing itself. The finiteness of consciousness comes in here, since Spirit by its own movement differentiates itself; but this finite consciousness is a movement of Spirit itself, it itself is self-differentiation, self-determination; that is to say, positing of itself as finite consciousness. By means of this, however, it is only mediated through consciousness or finite spirit in such wise that it has to render itself finite in order to become knowledge of itself through this rendering of itself finite. Thus religion is the Divine Spirit’s knowledge of itself through the mediation of finite spirit. Accordingly, in the Idea in its highest form, religion is not a transaction of man, but is essentially the highest determination of the absolute Idea itself.

Absolute Spirit in its consciousness is knowledge of itself. If it has knowledge of what is other than itself, it then ceases to be absolute Spirit. In accordance with this description, it is here maintained that this content, which the knowledge of absolute Spirit has of itself, is the absolute truth, is all truth, so that this Idea comprehends the entire wealth of the natural and spiritual world in itself, is the only substance and truth of all that constitutes this world, while it is in the Idea alone that everything has its truth, as being a moment of its essential existence.

The proof of the necessity that this content of religion should thus be absolute truth, in so far as it starts from what is immediate, and exhibits that content as the result of another content, has been discussed, and already lies behind us. When this proof was given above in its proper place, we saw at once how the one-sidedness of its procedure by which the content appears not as absolute, but as a result, annuls itself. For that which appears as First, whether it be the logical abstraction of Being, or the finite world—this First, this Immediate, this which appears unposited, is eventually itself posited as