Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/66

 religious feeling. To this, however, the spirit can only attain by doing violence to itself, for the independence of consciousness demands satisfaction, and will not be thrust aside by force; and to renounce independent thought, is not within the power of the healthy mind. Religious feeling becomes yearning hyprocrisy, and retains the moment of non-satisfaction. The other alternative is a one-sided attitude of indifference toward religion, which is either left unquestioned and let alone, or is ultimately attacked and opposed. That is the course followed by shallow spirits.

This, then, is the first preliminary question in virtue of which the right of reason to occupy itself with the doctrines of religion has to be proved.

2. In the sphere above referred to, it is only maintained that reason cannot apprehend the truth of the nature of God: the possibility of apprehending other truths is not denied to it; it is only the highest truth which is said to be beyond its knowledge. According to another position, however, it is entirely denied to reason to know truth at all. It is asserted that philosophical knowledge, when it deals with Spirit in its true essence, in and for itself, with life, with the infinite, only produces mistakes, and that reason must renounce all claim to grasp anything of the infinite in an affirmative manner; the infinite is destroyed by thought, is brought down to the level of the finite. This result, in regard to reason, this negation of reason, is even said to be a result of rational knowledge itself. Thus it would be necessary first to examine reason itself in order to ascertain whether the capability of knowing God, and consequently the possibility of a philosophy of religion, is inherent in it.

3. It follows from this that the knowledge of God is not to be placed in the reason which seeks to comprehend its object, but that the consciousness of God springs only out of feeling; and that the relation of man to God lies within the sphere of feeling only, and is not to be