Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/140

 granted, recognised, valid, i.e., truth necessarily presents itself at first to men in the form of authority.

All truth, even material truth—this, however, is not truth properly so-called—comes to men in this form, to begin with. In our sense-perception the world presents itself to us as authority, it is, we find it as it is, we take it as something which has existence, and we are related to it as something which exists. It exists in a certain way, and its existence in this form is valid for us.

Doctrine, the spiritual element does not actually exist in the form of material authority of this sort, but must be taught as established truth. Custom is something established or valid, a definitely formed conviction; but because it is something spiritual we do not say: it is; but rather, it is valid. Since it comes to us as something which exists, it is, and since it thus comes to us as something having valid worth, we call the mode in which it thus appears authority.

Just as man has to learn about material things on authority and because they are there and exist, has to be content with them—the sun is there, and because it is there I must be content with it—so, too, is it with doctrine or truth; it does not, however, come to us by means of sense-perception, by the active exercise of the senses, but through teaching, as something which actually exists, through authority. What is in the human spirit, i.e., in its true spirit, is in this way brought into its consciousness as something objective, or what is in it is developed so that it knows it to be the truth in which it exists. In such education, practice, training, and appropriation, the whole interest centres merely in getting accustomed to the Good and the True. So far we are not concerned with overcoming Evil, for Evil has implicitly and actually been overcome.

We are concerned merely with contingent subjectivity. With the one characteristic of faith, namely, that the subject is not what it is meant to be, there is joined the