Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/378

 act of eternal self-production. Here we have the concrete and popular idea of God as Spirit. The Notion of Spirit is the Notion which has Being in-and-for-itself, that is to say, knowledge. This infinite Notion is negative reference to self. When thus posited it is judgment, the act of distinguishing, self-differentiation. But what is thus differentiated, and which at first appears as something outward, devoid of Spirit, outside of God, is really identical with the Notion. The development of this Idea is the absolute truth. In the Christian religion it is known that God has revealed Himself, and it is the very nature of God to reveal Himself, and to reveal is to differentiate. What is revealed is just that God is the revealed God.

Religion must be something for all men; for those who have so purified their thought that they know what exists in the pure element of thought, and who have arrived at a philosophical knowledge of what God is, as well as for such as have not got beyond feeling and ordinary ideas.

Man is not merely pure thought. On the contrary, thought manifests itself as perception or picture-thought, or in the form of ordinary ideas. The absolute truth which is revealed to Man must therefore exist for him as a being who forms general ideas and sensuous images, who has feelings and sensations. This is the mark by which religion in general is distinguished from philosophy. Philosophy thinks what otherwise exists only for the ordinary idea and sensuous perception. Man who thus forms general ideas, is in his character as Man a thinking being also, and the substance of religion comes to him as a being who thinks. It is only a thinking being that can have a religion, and to think is also to form ideas, though the former act alone is the free form of truth. The Understanding thinks too, but it does not get beyond identity; for it the Notion is Notion, and Being is Being. These two one-sided categories always