Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/186

THIRD LECTURE

It has already been remarked that the assertion of faith, of which we have to speak, is found outside of genuine simple faith. This latter, in so far as it has advanced to conscious knowledge, and has consequently acquired a consciousness of knowledge, accedes to knowledge with full confidence in it, because it is pre-eminently full of confidence in itself, is sure of itself, and firmly established in itself. We are rather concerned with faith in so far as it takes up a polemical attitude towards rational knowledge, and expresses itself in a polemical fashion even against knowledge in general. It is thus not a faith which opposes itself to another kind of faith. Faith (or belief) is what is common to both; it is therefore the content which fights against the content. But this fact of having to do with content at once brings knowledge with it. If it were otherwise, the overthrow and defence of the truth of religion would not be carried out with external weapons, which are just as foreign to faith and religion as to knowledge. The faith which rejects knowledge as such, is just because of this devoid of content, and is, to begin with, to be taken abstractly as faith in general, as it opposes itself to concrete knowledge, to rational knowledge, without reference to content. As thus abstract, it is removed back into the simplicity of self-consciousness. This is in its simplicity, in so far as it has any fulness at all, feeling, and what is content in knowledge is definiteness of feeling. The assertion of abstract faith thus leads immediately to the form of feeling, in which the subjectivity of knowledge intrenches itself as in an inaccessible place. The standpoints of both must therefore be briefly indicated, from which their one-sidedness,