Being. This unity thus involved in the certainty is the inseparability from me of this content which yet is different from me and myself; it is the inseparability of two things which are yet distinguished from one another.
It is possible to stop here, and it has even been maintained that we are compelled to stop at this certainty. A distinction, however, at once suggests itself to people’s minds here, and it is one which is made in connection with everything. A thing, it is said, may be certain, but it is another question whether it is true. The truth is here opposed to the certainty; from the fact that a thing is certain, it does not necessarily follow that it is true.
The immediate form of this certainty is that of faith. Faith, indeed, directly involves an antithesis; and this antithesis is more or less indefinite. It is usual to put faith in contrast with knowledge. Now, if it be wholly opposed to knowledge, we get an empty antithesis. What I believe, I also know; it is contained in my consciousness. Faith is a form of knowledge, but by knowledge is usually understood a mediated knowledge, a knowledge involving clear apprehension.
To put it more definitely, certainty is called faith, partly in so far as this is not an immediate, sensuous certainty, and partly, too, in so far as this knowledge is not a knowledge of the necessity or necessary nature of a content. What I see immediately before me, that I know; I do not believe that there is a sky above me; I see it. On the other hand, if I have rational insight into the necessity of a thing, in this case, too, I do not say “I believe,” as, for example, in the theorem of Pythagoras. In this case it is assumed that a person does not merely accept the evidence of a thing on authority, but that he has seen into its truth for himself.
In recent times, faith has been taken to mean a certainty which stands in contrast with the perception of the necessary nature of an object. This, especially, is the meaning attached to faith by Jacobi. Thus, says
