mediated knowledge, does not invalidate the whole procedure.
What has to be done, therefore, is to restore the proofs of the existence of God to their place of honour, by divesting them of what is inadequate in them. We have God and His existence (Dasein); existence is determinate finite Being; the Being of God is not in any way whatever a limited Being; existence (Existenz) too is taken in the sense of specific existence. We thus have God in His Being, actuality, objectivity, and the process of proof has for its object to point out to us the connection between the two determinations, because they are different, and not immediately One.
Everything is immediate in its relation to itself—God as God, Being as Being. To prove is to show that those elements which are to begin with in a condition of difference have also a connection, an identity—not a pure identity, for that would be immediacy, sameness. To exhibit a connection means, in fact, to prove; this connection may be of different kinds, and so far as the process of proof is concerned, the kind of connection which is in question is left undecided.
There is connection which is of an entirely external, mechanical kind. For example, we see that a roof is necessary to the walls; the house has this roofed form as protection against the weather, &c. It may be said, it is proved that a house must have a roof; the object is the combination of the walls with the roof. This is certainly a case of one thing matching with another; it is connection, but at the same time we have the consciousness that this connection does not concern the being of these objects. That wood and tiles constitute a roof, does not affect their being; so far as they are concerned, the connection is merely an external one. In this case, proof consists in pointing out a connection between entities for which the connection is itself external.
There are accordingly other forms of connection which
