Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/130

 sensuous faith; what is true for Spirit is something for which sensuous manifestation has only a secondary value. Since Spirit starts from what is sensuous, and attains to this lofty estimate of itself, its relation to the Sensuous is a directly negative relation. This is a fundamental principle.

Still, spite of this, there always remains a certain curiosity in this matter, and a desire to know how in this case we are to understand miracles, how we are to explain them and conceive of them—to conceive of them, that is to say, in the sense that they are not miracles at all, but, on the contrary, are natural effects. A curiosity of this kind, however, presupposes doubt and unbelief, and would like to find some plausible grounds whereby the persons concerned might still be held to be morally virtuous and preserve their character for truthfulness; so next it is maintained that there was no intention to deceive, i.e., that no deception actually was practised, and that in any case it was so moderate and well meant that Christ and His friends ought still to be considered as honourable persons. The shortest way of settling the matter would be entirely to reject miracles; if we do not believe in any miracles at all, and find that they are opposed to reason, the fact of their being proved will do no good; the evidence for them must rest on sense-perception, but there is in the human mind an insurmountable objection to regard as truth what is attested solely after this fashion—for here the proofs are nothing but possibilities and probabilities, i.e., they are merely subjective and finite reasons.

Or we must give the advice: simply don’t have doubts and then they are solved! But I must have them, I cannot rid myself of them, and the necessity there is for answering them rests on the necessity of having them. Reflection advances these claims as absolute, it fixes on these finite reasons; but by piety, by true faith, these finite reasons, these methods of the finite understanding