Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/345

 If we now consider the transition already specified as it presents itself in the proofs of the existence of God, we find it expressed in the form of a syllogism to be the Cosmological Proof. In metaphysics the essence of this proof is that contingent Being, the contingency of worldly things, is made the starting-point, and then the other determination is not that of infinitude, but that of something necessary in and for itself. This last is indeed a much more concrete determination than that of the Infinite; only, in accordance with the content of the proof, it is not it that is in question here, but it is only the logical nature of the transition which comes under consideration.

If we put the transition in this way into the form of a syllogism, we then say that the finite presupposes the Infinite; the finite is, consequently there is an Infinite. If we look at such a syllogism critically, we perceive that it leaves us cold or indifferent; something different from this and more than this is asked for in religion. From one point of view this demand is right enough; on the other hand, however, such a rejection of proof involves the depreciation of thought, as if we made use of feeling, and had to appeal to popular or pictorial conceptions in order to produce conviction. The true nerve is true thought; only when that is true is feeling too of a true kind.

What is specially noticeable here is that a finite form of Being is accepted as the starting-point, and this finite Being thus appears as that by means of which the infinite Being gets its foundation. A finite Being thus appears as the foundation or basis. Mediation is given a position which implies that the consciousness of the Infinite has its origin in the finite. To speak more accurately, what we have here is that the finite is expressed in terms which imply that it has only a positive relation between the two. The proposition thus means that the Being of the finite is the Being of the Infinite.