Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/308

 or grasp in thought, are terms which, like “immediate” and “faith,” belong to present-day culture. They have the authority of a preconceived idea which has a twofold character. On the one hand, there is the fact that they are absolutely familiar, and are consequently final categories regarding whose signification and verification there is no need to inquire further. On the other hand, there is the fact that the inability of reason to comprehend and know the True and the Infinite is something settled quite as much as their general meaning is. The words, to know or cognise, to comprehend or grasp in thought, have the value of a magical formula. It never occurs to those under the influence of this preconceived idea to ask what the expressions to know, to grasp in thought, mean, or to get a clear idea of them, and yet that would be the sole and only point of importance if we were to say something that was really pertinent regarding the main question. In any such investigation it would be evident of itself that knowledge merely expresses the fact of the transition which Spirit itself makes, and in so far as knowledge is true knowledge or comprehension it is a consciousness of the necessity which is contained in the transition itself, and is nothing save the act of forming a conception of this characteristic which is immanent and present in it.

But if, so far as the fact of the transition from the finite to the Infinite is concerned, it is replied that this transition takes place in the spirit, or in faith, feeling, and the like, such an answer would not be the whole answer, which rather essentially takes the following form. Religious belief, or feeling, inner revelation, means that we have an immediate knowledge of God which is not reached by mediation. It means that the transition does not consist of an essential connection between the two sides, but is made in the form of a leap from one to the other. What we would call a transition is broken up in this way into two separate acts which are outwardly