Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/270

 the whole point just is to find out why it is not. The question is not as to whether or not we are to begin with one or other of the presuppositions, that is, with the immediate characteristic, the ordinary idea; but rather, what we have got to see is that no beginning can be made with any such presupposition, that is, that it cannot be regarded and treated as forming the basis, the permanent foundation of the proof.

For the statement that the presuppositions belonging to each of the two propositions—of which the one is proved by the other—have to be represented as mediated, when taken in its more obvious sense, deprives them of the essential meaning which belongs to them as immediate characteristics. For the fact that they are posited as mediated implies that their essential character consists in their being transitory rather than permanent subjects. In this way, however, the whole nature of the proof is altered, for it stood in need of having the subject as a fixed basis and standard. If it starts from something which has a transitory character, it loses all support, and cannot, in fact, have any existence at all. If we consider the form of the judgment more closely, it will be seen that what has just been explained is involved in the form itself, and, in fact, the judgment is what it is just owing to its form. It has, that is, for its subject something immediate, something which has Being in general, while as its predicate, which is meant to express what the subject is, it has something universal, namely, thought. The judgment consequently itself signifies that what has Being is not a something having Being, but is a thought.

This will at once become clearer from the example with which we are dealing, and which will better help us to understand, however, why we are limited to what the example directly contains, namely, the first of the two propositions, in which the Infinite is posited as what has been mediated. The express consideration of the other, in which Being appears as a result, will be taken up in a different place.