Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/358

 which apprehends or receives impressions only when we look at it in one of its two aspects, while looked at in the other it is activity.

Our attitude here is essentially an attitude of activity of this kind; we are, in fact, conscious that we are thinking on thought itself, on the course taken by the categories of thought, a kind of thinking which has tested itself and knows itself, which knows how it thinks, and knows which are the finite and which the true categories of thought. That, regarding the matter from the other point of view, we start from what is positive, is true in reference to education, and is even necessary; but here we must abandon this mode of procedure in so far as we employ the scientific method.

3. The absolute religion is thus the religion of Truth and Freedom. For truth means that the mind does not take up such an attitude to the objective as would imply that this is something foreign to it. Freedom brings out the real meaning of truth, and gives it a specific character by means of negation. Spirit is for Spirit; that expresses its nature, and it is thus its own presupposition. We start with Spirit as subject, it is identical with itself, it is the eternal perception of itself, and it is at the same time conceived of only as a result, as the end of a process. It is the presupposition of itself, and it is at the same time the result, and it exists only as the end of a process. This is truth, this condition of being adequate, of being object and subject. The fact that it is itself the object makes it the reality, the Notion, the Idea, and it is this which makes the Truth. So, too, it is the religion of freedom. Freedom considered abstractly means that the mind is related to something objective which is not regarded as foreign to its nature, its essential character is the same as that of truth, only that in the case of freedom the negation of the difference of Otherness has been done away with and absorbed in something higher, and thus it appears in the form of Reconciliation.