Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/228

 formal knowledge of itself. Since faith must be defined as the witness of the spirit to absolute Spirit, or as a certainty of the truth, it involves relation in respect of the distinction of Object and Subject, a mediation in fact, but a mediation within itself; for in faith as it is here defined, external mediation and that particular mode of it have already vanished. This mediation therefore belongs to the essential nature of Spirit, and is the substantial unity of Spirit with itself, which infinite form likewise essentially is. To express this in more concrete language, the certainty faith has of the truth, or, this uniting of the absolute content with knowledge, is that absolute, divine connection itself, in accordance with which the knowing subject, the self-consciousness, in so far as it knows the true content, as free, as laying aside all peculiarities of its particular or individual content, has knowledge of itself, though of its essence only. In this its free, absolute certainty, it has the very certainty of the truth. As knowing, it has an object, and this as being the Essence is the absolute Object. It is at the same time no foreign object, no object which is for consciousness something other than and beyond it, but it is its own Potentiality, its Essence. For consciousness, as absolutely certain, is identical with this certainty. This content is the potentiality of self-consciousness, and in this character exists for us, having in as far as it is essential being only, objectivity for self-consciousness, or to put it otherwise, it constitutes its aspect as consciousness. This is the innermost, abstract point of personality, which can be understood in a speculative way only as this unity of self-consciousness and consciousness, or of knowledge and its essence, of infinite form and absolute content. This unity exists simply and solely as the knowledge of it in an objective form, as being the Essence which is my Essence.

In this exposition so much depends on each individual moment, and at the same time on the essential combination of these in unity, that if one only of these moments be held