Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/225

 so that in showing the necessity for accepting the fact as true we may start from any one of these points. The direct testimonies may also be very many in number, and each testimony in so far as it is not otherwise self-contradictory has in this sphere the force of a proof. If in the case of a mathematical proposition one single example is held to be sufficient, it is principally in connection with historical subjects and juridical cases that a multiplicity of proofs must be held to strengthen the force of the proof itself. In the region of experience or phenomena, the object, as being an empirical and individual thing, has the quality of contingency, and thus the particularity of the knowledge we have of it gives the object the same mere appearance of Being. It is its connection with other facts which gives the object its necessary character, and each of these again belongs in itself to this contingent sphere. Here it is the extension and repetition of such connection which gives to objectivity the kind of universality which is possible in this region. The verification of a fact or a perception by means of the mere number of the observations taken, relieves the subjectivity of perception from the reproach of being an illusion, a deception, or any one of those forms of error which it may by way of objection be declared to be.

In dealing with God since we presuppose the existence of an absolutely general idea of Him, it is found, on the one hand, that He infinitely transcends that region in which all objects whatsoever stand in a connected relation with one another; and that, on the other hand, since God exists only for the inner element of Man’s nature in general, we directly meet in this sphere with the contingency of thought, conception, and imagination, in the most varied forms and with what is expressly allowed to be contingency, namely, that of sensations, emotions, and such like. We thus get an infinite number of starting-points from which it is possible to advance to God, and from which we must necessarily advance, and