Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/201

 unfold its meaning and necessity. Knowledge is just this unfolding of the objective movement of the content, of the inner necessity which essentially belongs to it, and it is true knowledge since it is in unity with the object. For us this object must be the elevation of our spirit to God, and is thus what we have referred to as the necessity of absolute truth in the form of that final result into which everything returns in the Spirit.

But because it contains the name of God, the mention of this end may easily have the effect of rendering worthless all that was urged against the false ideas of knowledge, cognition, and feeling, and all that was gained in the way of a conception of true knowledge.

It has already been remarked that the question as to whether our reason can know God, was made a formal one; that is to say, it was referred to the criticism of knowledge, of rational knowledge in general, and connected with the nature of faith and feeling in such a way that what is included under these special heads is to be understood apart altogether from any content. This is the position taken up by immediate knowledge, which itself speaks with the fruit of the tree of knowledge in its mouth, and transfers the problem to the formal sphere since it bases the justification of such knowledge, and of this exclusively, on the reflections which it makes regarding proof and philosophical knowledge, and as a consequence it has to put the true and infinite content outside of the range of its reflections, because it does not get beyond the idea of finite knowledge and cognition. With this presupposition of a knowledge and cognition which are merely finite, we contrasted the knowledge which does not remain outside of the Thing or true reality, but which, without introducing any of its own qualities, simply follows the course of true reality, and we have directed attention to the substantial element in feeling and the heart, and have shown that, speaking generally, it exists essentially for