Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/72

 phenomena which can be known by means of these categories. In religion it is not, however, with phenomena that we have to do, it is with an absolute content. But those who employ this argumentative kind of reasoning seem to think the Kantian philosophers have existed only to afford opportunity for the more unblushing use of those categories.

It is entirely out of place, it is indeed preposterous, to bring forward these categories, such as immediacy, fact of consciousness, in opposition to philosophy, and to meet philosophy with the reply that the finite is different from the infinite, and the object from the subject, as if there were any one, any philosopher whatever, who did not know this, or had still to learn such trivialities. Yet people are not ashamed to parade triumphantly cleverness of this sort, as if they had made a new discovery.

We shall here remark only that such characteristics as finite and infinite, subject and object—and this is what always constitutes the foundation of that very knowing and overwise talk—are undoubtedly different, but are at the same time inseparable too. We have an example of this in physics, in the north and south pole of the magnet. It is often said “those characteristics are as different as heaven and earth.” That is quite correct; they are absolutely different, but as is already suggested by the figure just mentioned, they are inseparable. Earth cannot be shown without heaven, and vice versâ.

It is difficult to enter into discussion with those who wage war on the Philosophy of Religion and think they have triumphed over it, for they tell us so bluntly that immediacy, after all, “is something quite different from mediation.” At the same time they show an incredible ignorance, and a complete want of acquaintance with the forms and categories by means of which they make their attacks and pronounce a final judgment upon philosophy. They make their affirmations quite artlessly,