Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/241

 wars between Catholics and Protestants, the Inquisition too, and the battles in India between worshippers of Siva and Vishnu. In such conflicts the combatants fight for the glory of God, they fight in order that God may be recognised in consciousness, and that what is truth for the nation may receive recognition. Freedom of faith in the general sense revolts against such compulsion; this freedom, however, can further take up a position of impartiality relatively to the various forms of belief which assert themselves to be the truth. Thus this freedom is formally the same as freedom of faith as such, in which what is believed is not to be brought into question. Such then is the formal demand of freedom which does not criticise the truth of faith, and is concerned with subjective freedom only, whatever may be the nature of the content. It is here that the distinction enters between the inner life, the place of conscience, in which I am, so to speak, at home with myself, and the essential content. The inner life is the holy place, the seat of my freedom, and it is to be held in respect. This demand is an essential one, which is made by a man in proportion as the consciousness of freedom awakens within him. Here the basis is no longer the substantial content of faith, but its formal character.

But now the freedom of faith directly appears as a contradiction in itself if the matter be regarded from the point of view of abstract thought. For in the very act of believing, a man accepts something given, something already present. Freedom, on the other hand, requires that this should be posited, produced by myself. But in this demand of freedom, faith is really conceived of as my personal faith, as an inmost certainty which is absolutely and exclusively my own. In this certainty of my own, in this my conviction, my faith has its source and its place. I am free and independent with regard to others, whatever the faith itself may happen to be; or, in other words, the definite reasons, reflections, and feelings