Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/159

 itself the Notion, and these forms are necessary and essential.

Owing to the fact that reflection has invaded the domain of religion, thought or reflection takes up a hostile attitude to the ordinary or popular idea in religion and to its concrete content. Thought, when it has thus begun, never pauses again, but goes on its way, empties feeling, heaven, and the knowing mind, and the religious content accordingly takes refuge in the Notion. Here it must get its justification, here thought must conceive of itself as concrete and free, preserving the differences not as if they were only posited or dependent on something, but allowing them to appear as free, and consequently recognising the content as objective.

It is the business of philosophy to establish the relation in which thought stands to the two preceding stages. Religion, the need felt by the pious mind, can take refuge in “experience,” in feeling, as well as in the Notion, and limit itself to this, and thus give up the search after truth, renounce the possibility of knowing any content, so that the Holy Church has no longer any communion in it, but splits up into atoms. For what communion there is is in doctrine; but here each individual has a feeling of his own, has his own sensations or experiences, and his particular theory of the universe. This form does not answer to Spirit which also wishes to know what its relation is to doctrine. Philosophy thus stands opposed to two points of view. On the one hand, it appears to be opposed to the Church, and has this in common with culture and reflection, that in comprehending the popular religious idea it does not keep to the forms of the popular idea, but has to comprehend it in thought, though in doing this it recognises that the form of the popular idea is also necessary. But the Notion is that higher element which also embraces within it different forms and allows their right to exist. The second way in which it takes up an attitude of