these proofs, and whatever defective points there may be in their manner of unfolding the moments of the elevation of the spirit from the accidental and temporal to the infinite and eternal, the human heart will not allow itself to be deprived of this elevation. In so far as the human heart has been checked in this matter of elevation to God by the Understanding, faith has, on the one hand, appealed to it to hold fast by this elevation, and not to trouble itself with the fault-finding of the Understanding; but it has, on the other hand, told itself not to trouble about proof at all, in order that it may reach what is the surest standing ground, and in the interest of its own simplicity it has ranged itself on the side of the critical Understanding in direct opposition to proof. Faith will not allow itself to be robbed of its right of rising to God, that is, of its witness to the truth, because this is inherently necessary, and is more than any single chance fact connected with Spirit. There are facts, inner experiences in Spirit, and still more are there in the individual spirits—for Spirit does not exist as an abstraction, but in the form of many spirits—facts of an infinitely varied sort, and sometimes of the most opposite and depraved character. In order that this fact may be rightly conceived of as a fact of Spirit as such, and not merely as a fact belonging to the various ephemeral contingent spirits, it is requisite to conceive of it in its necessary character. It is this necessary character which alone vouches for its truth in this contingent and arbitrary sphere. The sphere to which this higher fact belongs is, further, essentially the sphere of abstraction. Not only is it very difficult to have a clear and definite consciousness of what abstraction is and what is the nature of its inner connection, but this power of abstraction is itself the real danger, and this is a danger which is unavoidable when abstraction has once appeared, when the believing human spirit has once tasted of the Tree of Knowledge, and thought has begun to spring up within it in the free and independent form which peculiarly belongs to it.
