is in its very essence the parting from and forsaking of what is immediate, what is finite; it is a passing over to the intellectual, or, objectively defined, the gathering up of what is perishable into its absolute substantial essence. Religion is the consciousness of what is in and for itself true, in contrast to sensuous, finite truth, and to sense perceptions. Accordingly, it is a rising above, a reflecting upon, a transition from what is immediate, sensuous, individual (for the immediate is what is first, and therefore is not exaltation), and is thus a going out and on to an Other. This does not mean, however, a going on to a Third, and so on, for in that case the Other would be itself again something finite, and not an Other. Consequently it is a progress onward to a Second, but of such a kind that this progress, this production of a Second, annuls and absorbs itself, and this Second is rather the First, that which is truly unmediated and unposited or independent. The standpoint of religion shows itself in this transition as the standpoint of truth, in which the whole wealth of the natural and spiritual world is contained. Every other manner in which this wealth of being exists must prove itself to be, in comparison, an external, arid, miserable, self-contradictory, and destructive mode of reality which involves the ending of truth, and has in it the note of untruth, a mode of reality which only returns to its foundation and its source as the standpoint of religion. By this demonstration, then, it is made clearly apparent that Spirit cannot stop short at any of these stages, nor can it remain there, and that it is only religion which is the true reality or actuality of self-consciousness.
So far as the proof of this necessity is concerned, the following remarks may be sufficient.
When it has to be shown in regard to anything that it is necessary, it is implied that we start from something else, from an Other. What is here the Other of the true divine existence is non-divine existence, the
