Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/229

 fast while we abstract from the others, or even if they be grasped in a more complete way, yet apart from their identity, this conception may easily seem merely to result in those one-sided forms of reflection which have already been considered, and may be confounded with them. This may all the more easily appear to be the case, since those very forms of reflection are none other than the single moments of the expounded conception held fast in a one-sided manner. The explanation of this distinction will help towards a fuller elucidation of the true conception, as also of those forms of reflection.

It having thus been shown that the Truth itself is contained in the certainty of spiritual, pure self-consciousness, and is inseparably identical with it, it may easily appear as if this determination were the same with the idea of the immediate knowledge of God, in which as immediate the Being of God is just as certain for me as I myself am, as my certainty of myself. Such an assertion, however, would essentially imply a persistent adherence to the immediacy of knowledge as such, and as excluding a perception of the truth that knowledge as such is in fact mediation in itself, an immediate affirmation, which is this simply and solely as negation of the negation. This would imply, further, that the immediacy of the knowing subject does not disappear, but that the latter persists in its finite independent Being, and therefore, together with its object, remains devoid of Spirit, so that it is only the speculative nature of the two moments and of the spiritual Substance which is not grasped in thought and directly treated of. In the act of devotion which rests on faith, the individual is oblivious of self, and is filled with his object. He yields up his heart, and does not keep his immediate character. Even if the subject, in the fire and warmth of devotion, buries itself in its object, it is, all the same, itself still present. It is precisely the subject which possesses itself in this devotional exercise; it is the subject which prays,