or knowledge based on thought, certainly takes its start from something outside, from instruction, from what is learnt, from authority in fact; still it is essentially an inner act of self-remembrance on the part of Spirit. The fact that the individual himself is satisfied is what constitutes Man’s formal freedom, and is the one moment in presence of which authority of every kind entirely falls away; and the fact that he finds satisfaction in the Thing, in the actual reality, is what makes real freedom, and is the other factor in presence of which, in the very same manner, all authority sinks out of sight. They are truly inseparable. Even in the case of faith the one absolutely valid method of proof referred to in the Scriptures does not consist of miracles, credible accounts and the like, but of the witness of the Spirit. With regard to other subjects we may yield to authority, either from confidence or from fear; but the exercise of the right referred to is at the same time the higher duty laid upon us. In connection with the kind of conviction implied in religious belief in which the innermost nature of Spirit is directly involved, both as regards the certainty of itself (conscience) and because of its content, the individual, in consequence of this, has the absolute right to demand that his own witness and not that of outside minds should be what decides and gives confirmation.
The metaphysical method of proof which we are here considering, constitutes the witness of thinking Spirit in so far as this latter is thinking Spirit not merely potentially, but actually. The object with which it takes to do, exists essentially in thought, and even if, as was previously remarked, it is taken in the sense of something represented in feeling, still the substantial element in it belongs to thought, which is its pure self, just as feeling is the empirical self, the self which has become specialised or separate. In reference to this object an advance was made at an early period to the stage of thinking, witnessing, that is, proving, so soon, in fact, as thought emerged from its condition of absorption in sensuous and material conceptions and ideas of the sky, the sun, the stars, the sea, and so on, and disengaged itself, so to speak, from its wrapping of pictures of the imagination which were still permeated by the sensuous element—so that Man came to be conscious of God as essentially objectivity which was to be thought of, and which had been reached by thought. So, too, the subjective action of Spirit by a process of recollection brought itself back from feeling, picture-thought, and imagination, to its essence, namely, thought, and sought to have before it what belongs peculiarly to this sphere, and to have it in its pure form as it exists in this sphere. The elevation of the soul to God in feeling, intuition, imagination, and thought—and as being subjective it is so concrete that it has in it something of all these elements—is an inner experience. In regard to it we have likewise an inner experience of the fact that accidental and arbitrary elements enter into it. Consequently there arises on external grounds the necessity for analysing that elevation, and for bringing into clear consciousness the acts and characteristic qualities contained in it, in order that it may be purified from other contingent elements, and from the contingency which attaches to thought itself; and in accordance with the old belief that what is substantial and true can be reached only by reflection, we effect the purification of this act of elevation whereby it attains to substantiality and necessity, by explaining it in terms of thought, and give thought the satisfaction of realising that the absolute right possessed by it has a right to satisfaction totally different from that belonging to feeling and sense-perception or ordinary conception.
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