Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/379

 keep this one-sided form, so far as it is concerned. In their true nature, on the other hand, these finite forms are no longer held to be inherently identical on the ground that they are, but rather they are considered to be merely moments of a totality.

Those who find fault with philosophy for thinking religion, for stating religion in terms of thought, don’t know what they want. Hatred and vanity here come directly into play under the outward guise of humility. True humility consists in having the spirit absorbed in the truth, in losing ourselves in what is most inward, in having within us the object, and the object only. Thus anything subjective which may still be present in feeling, disappears. We have to consider the Idea from the purely speculative point of view, and to justify its claims as against the Understanding, and against it as being hostile to all content of religion whatsoever. This content is called a mystery, because it is something hidden from the Understanding; for the latter does not get the length of the process which this unity is, and thus it is that everything speculative, everything philosophical, is for the Understanding a mystery.