Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/176

 account. It is pre-eminently, or, properly speaking, only here that it is self-evident that the proposition already laid down, according to which the consideration of knowledge is not different from the consideration of its object, must hold good without limitation. I will therefore at once indicate the general sense in which the proposed theme, the proofs of the existence of God, is taken, and which will be shown to be the true one. It is that they ought to comprise the elevation of the human spirit to God, and express it for thought, just as the elevation itself is an elevation of thought and into the kingdom of thought.

And to begin with, as regards knowledge, Man is essentially consciousness, and thus what is felt, the content, the determinateness which a feeling or sensation has, is also in consciousness as something presented in the form of an idea. That in virtue of which feeling is religious feeling, is the divine content; it is therefore essentially something of which we have knowledge. But this content is in its essence no sensuous perception or sensuous idea; it does not exist for imagination, but only for thought; God is Spirit, only for Spirit, and only for pure Spirit, that is, for thought. This is the root of such a content, even though imagination and even sense-perception may afterwards accompany it, and this content itself may enter into feeling. It is the elevation of the thinking Spirit to that which is the highest thought, to God, that we thus wish to consider.

This elevation is besides essentially rooted in the nature of our mind. It is necessary to it, and it is this necessity that we have before us in this elevation, and the setting forth of this necessity itself is nothing else than what we call proof. Therefore we have not to prove this elevation from the outside; it proves itself in itself, and this means nothing else than that it is by its very nature necessary. We have only to look to its own process, and we have there, since it is necessary in itself, the necessity, insight into the nature of which has to be vouched for by proof.