is in itself free, and its inherent appearance is its absolute form; and in the object the subject has before it the action of the Idea, of the Notion which exists in and for itself, which it itself is.
In describing thought and its development, we have now to observe in the first place how it shows itself in relation to idea or ordinary conception, or rather as the inner dialectic of idea; then, secondly, how as Reflection it seeks to mediate the essential moments of the religious attitude; and finally, how as speculative thought it completes itself in the notion or conception of religion, and does away with Reflection in the free necessity of the Idea.
1. The Dialectic of Idea.
a. What we have here to notice first of all is that thought dissolves this form of simplicity in which the content exists in idea. And that is the very charge which is so often brought against philosophy, when it is said that it does not leave the form of idea or ordinary thought untouched, but that it alters it, or strips off it the content. And then, since for the ordinary consciousness the truth is bound up with that form, it imagines that if the form be altered, it will lose the content and the essential reality, and it interprets that transformation as destruction. If philosophy changes what is in the form of the ordinary idea into the form of the Notion, we are undoubtedly met with the difficulty of how to separate in any content what is content as such, which is thought, from what belongs to the ordinary idea as such. But to break up the simplicity of idea or ordinary thought only means to begin with, to get the idea of distinct characteristics, as existing in this simple subject-matter, and to exhibit them in such a way that it is recognised as being something which is inherently manifold. This process is directly involved in the question: “What is that?” Blue, for instance, is a sensuous idea.
