Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/299

 heaven, still the real point is not the fact that a double world has been actually conceived of, but the value which is to be attached to such a conception. This value is expressed when it is said that the one world is the world of appearance or illusion, and the other the world of truth. When the former is abandoned, and we pass over to the other only in the sense that the world of appearance still remains present here, the connection between them as it presents itself to the religious man does not mean that that world is anything more than merely the point of departure, or that it is permanently fixed as a ground or basis to which Being, or the power of acting as a basis or condition, could be attributed. Satisfaction, everything in the way of a foundation or first principle is, on the contrary, found to exist in the eternal world as something which is independent in-and-for-itself. As opposed to this, in the form taken by the syllogism, the Being of both is expressed in a similar way—both in the one proposition of the connection: If a contingent world exists, an Absolutely-necessary exists too; as also in the other in which it is stated as a presupposition that a contingent world does exist; and further, in the third and concluding proposition: Therefore an Absolutely-necessary exists.

A few remarks may be further added regarding these propositions thus definitely expressed. And first of all in connection with the last of them, the way in which the two contrasted characteristics are linked together, must at once strike us: Therefore the Absolutely-necessary exists. Therefore expresses mediation through an Other, and yet it is immediacy, and directly absorbs the former of these characteristics, which, as has been indicated, is just what supplies the reason why such knowledge regarding whatever is its object is declared to be inadmissible. The abolition of mediation through an Other exists, however, potentially only. The syllogism, on the other hand, as exhibited in detail, gives full