Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/45

 through the influence of the Kantian philosophy, been brought into notice again in an outward way as a type, and, as it were, as a ground-plan of thought, and this in very definite forms of thought. When this Idea is thus known to represent what is the one and essential nature of God, the next step is to cease to regard it as something belonging to a region above human thought and beyond this world, and to feel that the goal of knowledge is the recognition of the truth in the Particular as well, and if it is thus recognised as present in it, then all that is true in the Particular involves this determination. To know in the philosophical sense, means to know anything in its determinateness. Its nature, however, is just the nature of the determinateness itself, and it is unfolded in the Idea. Logical exposition and logical necessity mean that this Idea represents truth in general, and that all thought-determinations can be reduced to this movement of determination.

II.

THE ETERNAL IDEA OF GOD IN THE ELEMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND ORDINARY THOUGHT (VORSTELLEN), OR, DIFFERENCE; THE KINGDOM OF THE SON.

We have here to consider how this Idea passes out of its condition of universality and infinity into the determination or specific form of finitude. God is everywhere present, and the presence of God is just the element of truth which is in everything.

To begin with, the Idea was found in the element of thought. This forms the basis, and we started with it. The Universal, and what is consequently the more abstract, must precede all else in scientific knowledge. Looking at the matter from a scientific point of view, it is what comes first, though actually it is what comes later, so far as its existence in a definite form is