Jacobi, we only believe that we have a body, we do not know it. Here knowledge has the more restricted meaning of knowledge of necessity. When I say “I see this,”—“this,” says Jacobi, is only a belief, for I perceive, I feel; and such sensuous knowledge is entirely immediate and unmediated, it is no reasoned principle. Here faith has in fact the meaning of immediate certainty.
Thus the expression “faith” is principally used to express the certainty that a God exists, in so far as we do not have any perception of the necessity of what constitutes God. In so far as the necessity of the content, its proved existence, is called the Objective, objective knowledge, or cognition, so far is faith something subjective. We believe in God in so far as we have not a perception of the necessity of this content which implies that He is what He is.
It is customary to say that we must believe in God, because we have no immediate or sensuous perception of Him. We speak, it is true, of grounds or reasons for belief, but language of this sort is inappropriate; for if I have grounds, and in fact objective, proper grounds, then the existence of the object is for me proved. The grounds themselves, however, may be of a subjective kind, and in this case I simply let my knowledge pass as proved knowledge, and in so far as these grounds are subjective, I speak of faith.
The first, the simplest, and as yet most abstract form of this subjective method of proof is this, that in the being of the Ego, the being of the object, too, is contained. This proof and this mode of the object’s appearance is given as the first and immediate form, in Feeling.
1. The Form of Feeling.
In regard to this, we find, to begin with, that the following conclusions hold good.
