Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/172

 timidly confined itself to the business of merely venturing through the medium of thought to deal with what the Christian religion possesses in common with heathen and non-Christian religions in general, and what must therefore remain a part merely of what is abstract in religion. But when once we have become conscious of the difference of these two spheres, we must pronounce the relation of equality in which faith and reason are to be regarded as standing each alongside of the other, to be unintelligible, or else to be a misleading pretence. The tendency of thought to seek unity leads of necessity to the comparison of these spheres first of all, and then when they once pass for different, to the agreement of faith with itself alone, and of thought with itself alone, so that each sphere refuses to recognise the other and rejects it. It is one of the commonest self-deceptions of the Understanding to regard the element of difference, which is found in the one central point of Spirit, as though it must not necessarily advance to opposition and so to contradiction. The point at which the conflict on the part of Spirit begins has been reached as soon as what is concrete in Spirit has, by means of analysis, attained to the consciousness of difference. All that partakes of Spirit is concrete; in this we have before us the Spiritual in its most profound aspect, that of Spirit as the concrete element of faith and thought. The two are not only mixed up in the most manifold way, in immediate passing over from one side to the other, but are so inwardly bound up together that there is no faith which does not contain within itself reflection, argumentation, or, in fact, thought, and, on the other hand, no thinking which does not, even if it be only for the moment, contain faith,—for faith in general is the form of any presupposition, of any assumption, come whence it may, which lies firmly at the foundation—momentary faith. This means that even in free thinking that which now exists as a presupposition, is a comprehended result, thought out either before or after,