reality, with the secular life, is an actual and accomplished fact.
2. The second point is that the ideal side now emerges here on its own account. In this state in which Spirit is reconciled with itself, what is inward knows itself as being within the sphere of its own nature, knows that it is together with itself, and this knowledge that it is together with itself, not outside of itself, is just Thought, which is the state of reconciliation, the being together with self, the being at peace with self, but in a wholly abstract undeveloped condition of peace with itself. There thus arises the infinite demand that the content of religion should verify its truth for Thought as well, and this is a necessary requirement which cannot be set aside.
Thought is the Universal, the active expression of the Universal, and stands in contrast to the concrete in general, which represents the external.
It is the Freedom of Reason which has been won in religion, and which knows itself in Spirit as existing for itself. This freedom accordingly opposes itself to the purely unspiritual externality, to servitude; for servitude is directly opposed to the conception of reconciliation and liberation, and thus thought enters in and destroys and bids defiance to externality in whatever form it may appear.
This represents the negative and formal act which in its concrete form has been called the “Enlightenment,” and which implies that thought sets itself to oppose externality, and that the freedom of Spirit, which is involved in reconciliation, is asserted. This thought, when it first appears, appears in the form of this abstract Universal, and sets itself against the concrete in general, and consequently against the Idea of God, against the theory that God is the Triune God and not a dead abstraction, but a Being related to Himself, who is at home with Himself and returns to Himself. Abstract thought attacks this doctrinal content, as held by the Church,
