Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/178

 with religious knowledge, and even the religious frame of mind itself, which must accordingly be likewise considered.

The distinction, which has already been touched upon in connection with knowledge, implies that two kinds of proof must be taken into account, of which the one is clearly that which we use simply as an aid to knowledge, as something subjective, whose activity and movement have their place within ourselves, and are not the peculiar movement of the thing considered. That this kind of proof finds a place in the scientific knowledge of finite things and their finite content, becomes apparent when we examine the nature of the procedure more closely. Let us take for this purpose an example from a science in which this method of proof is admittedly applied in its most complete form. If we prove a geometrical proposition every part of the proof must in part carry its justification within itself, so also when we solve an equation in algebra. In part, however, the whole course of procedure is defined and justified through the aim which we have in connection with this, and because that end is attained by such procedure. But we are very well aware that that of which the quantitive value has been developed out of the equation, has not as an actual thing run through these operations in order to reach the quantity which it possesses, and that the magnitude of the geometrical lines, angles, and so on, has not gone through and been brought about by the series of propositions by which we have arrived at it as representing a result. The necessity which we see in such proof corresponds indeed to the individual properties of the object itself, these relations of quantity actually belong to it; but the progress in connecting the one with the other is something which goes on entirely within us; it is a process for realising the aim we have in view, namely, to see into the meaning of the thing, not a course in which the object arrives at its inherent relations and their