What we call “necessary” is this, that if the one is, the other is thereby posited too, the first is only determined in so far as the second exists, and conversely. For idea or ordinary thought the finite exists, the finite is. For philosophic thought, the finite immediately becomes something which does not exist on its own account, but which requires for its existence something else, only is in fact through an Other. For thought in general, for definite thought, more precisely for notional comprehension or philosophic conception there is nothing immediate.
Immediacy is the leading category of idea or ordinary conception where the content is known in its simple relation to self. For thought, that only exists in which mediation is essentially present. These are the abstract, general characteristics which belong to this abstract distinction between religious idea or conception and thought.
If, in relation to the question before us, we consider this point more closely, all forms of immediate knowledge, faith, feeling, &c., are seen to belong in this respect to the category of idea or ordinary thought. And here the question arises, “Is religion, the knowledge of God, an immediate or a mediated knowledge?”
2. The Mediation of the Religious Consciousness in itself.
In passing on to consider what is essentially involved in thought and necessity, and consequently to mediation, the demand for such a mediated knowledge comes into opposition with immediate knowledge, and it is in this aspect of opposition that we have in the first place to consider it.
(a.) Immediate knowledge and mediation.
It is a very general opinion, and it is generally asserted that the knowledge of God exists only in an immediate fashion; it is a fact of our consciousness, it is so. We have an idea of God and the conviction that this idea is not only subjective in us but that God also is. It is said that religion, the knowledge of God, is faith only,
