Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/369

 as such attains to existence as a free Notion existing in its subjectivity as distinct from its reality as such.

The sun, the animal is the Notion merely, but has not the Notion; for them the Notion has not become objective. It is in consciousness and not in the sun that we find that division which is called I, the existing Notion, the Notion in its subjective reality, and I, this Notion, am the subjective.

No man, however, is content with his mere self-hood. The Ego is active, and this activity shows itself in objectifying self, in giving to it reality, definite existence. In its more extended and concrete signification, this activity of the Notion is impulse. All sense of satisfaction arises through this process whereby subjectivity is done away with, and what is inward and subjective is posited as at the same time outward, objective, and real, that process by which the unity of the merely subjective and merely objective is brought about, and the two are stripped of their one-sidedness.

There is nothing so well illustrated by all that goes on in the world as the abolition of the antithesis of subjective and objective, whereby the unity of the two is effected.

The thought of Anselm, therefore, so far as its content is concerned, is the truer and more necessary thought; but the form of the proof deduced from it is certainly defective in the same way as the modes of mediation previously referred to. This unity of Notion and Being is hypothetical, and its defect consists just in the very fact of its being hypothetical.

What is presupposed is that the pure Notion, the Notion in-and-for-itself, the Notion of God, is, involves Being also.

If we compare this content with faith or immediate knowledge, we shall find that the content is the same as that of Anselm’s presupposition.