Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/295

 by the contingent world—quite the contrary. The entire development of the connection is seen only in the act of proof. It is only our knowledge of the Absolutely-necessary which is conditioned by that starting-point. The Absolutely-necessary does not exist in virtue of the fact that it raises itself out of the world of contingency, and requires this world as its starting-point and presupposition, in order that by starting from it it may thus first reach its Being. It cannot be the Absolutely-necessary, it cannot be God who has to be thought of thus as something mediated by an Other, as something dependent and conditioned. It is the content of the proof itself which corrects the defect which is visible only in its form. We are thus in presence of a distinction and a difference between the form and the nature of the content, and the form is more certainly seen to contain the defective element, from the very fact that the content is the Absolutely-necessary. This content is not itself devoid of form, as was evident from the nature of its determination. Its own form as being the form of the True is itself true, and the form which differs from it is for that reason the Untrue.

If we take what we have in general designated Form, in its more concrete signification, namely, as knowledge, we find ourselves amongst the well-known and favourite categories of finite knowledge, which as being subjective is defined generally as finite, while the course followed by the movement of knowledge belonging to it is defined as a finite act. Here accordingly the same element of inadequacy appears only in another shape. Knowledge is a finite act, and any such act cannot involve the comprehension of the Absolutely-necessary, of the Infinite. Knowledge demands, in short, that it should have the content in itself and should follow it. The knowledge which has an absolutely necessary, infinite content must itself be absolutely necessary and infinite. We thus find ourselves in the best position for wrestling once more with