Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/126

 outward force such as that used by the Church against heretics.

This then is (2.) Knowledge or Faith, for faith is also knowledge only in a peculiar form. We have now to consider this point.

Thus what we see is that the divine content appears as self-conscious knowledge of the Divine in the element of consciousness, of inwardness. On the one hand, it is seen that the content is the truth, and that it is the truth of infinite Spirit in general, i.e., is its knowledge, in such a way that it finds its freedom in this knowledge, is itself the Process by which it casts aside its particular individuality, and gets freedom for itself in this content.

To begin with, however, the content exists for the immediate consciousness, and the truth might appear for consciousness in a variety of material forms, for the Idea is one in all things, it is universal necessity; reality can be only the mirror of the Idea, and for consciousness the Idea can accordingly issue forth from everything, for it is always the Idea that is in these infinitely many drops which reflect back the Idea. The Idea is represented figuratively, known and foreshadowed in the seed which is the fruit; the fruit in its final character dies away in the earth, and it is through this negation that the plant first comes into being. A history, a pictorial representation, a description, a phenomenon of this sort can be elevated by Spirit to the rank of something universal, and thus the history of the seed or of the sun becomes a symbol of the Idea, but only a symbol, for they are forms which, so far as their peculiar content and specific quality are concerned, are inadequate to express the Idea; what is consciously known through them lies outside of them, the signification they suggest does not exist in them as signification. The object which exists in itself as the Notion is spiritual subjectivity, Man; it is signification in virtue of what it itself is, and this signification does not lie outside of it. It is what thinks everything, knows