Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/158

 the Notion so determines itself as to take on the form of totality, of the Idea.

It is free reason which has an essential existence, is in-and-for-itself, which develops the content of truth and justifies it in knowledge, recognises and cognises one truth. The purely subjective standpoint, the volatilisation of all content, the Enlightenment of the Understanding, together with Pietism, do not recognise any content, and consequently no truth.

The Notion, however, produces the truth—this is subjective freedom—but at the same time recognises this content to be something not produced, to be something which is inherent and essentially true, true in-and-for-itself. This objective standpoint is alone capable of expressing and attesting the witness of the Spirit in a way which betokens intellectual training and thought, and it is involved in the position taken up by the better kind of dogmatic theology of our day.

This standpoint consequently supplies us with the justification of religion, and in particular of the Christian or true religion; it knows the content in accordance with its necessity, in accordance with its reason, and so, too, it knows the forms also in the development of this content.

What these forms are we have already seen, namely, the manifestation of God, that representation for the sensuous, spiritual consciousness which has arrived at universality, at thought, that complete development which exists for Spirit.

In the act of justifying the content and the forms, in getting a rational knowledge of the specific character of the manifestation, thought at the same time also knows the limits of the forms. Enlightenment knows only of negation, of limit, of determinateness as such, and because of this is unjust to the content.

Form or determinateness is not merely finitude, or limit, but rather the form, as totality of the form is