which retains the finite, which acknowledges the vanity of the finite, but yet retains this which it confesses and knows to be vain, and makes it into the Absolute, while in so doing it holds aloof from rational knowledge, and from substantial objective religion and religious life, and either destroys them, or prevents them from making their influence felt.
In losing ourselves in the true object itself, we escape from this vanity of the self-maintaining subjectivity, from this Ego, and make serious work with vanity. This follows as a consequence of what was accomplished in the science of logic.
The negative relation of consciousness to the Absolute is commonly based upon observation; for consciousness, it is said, only the finite exists. The infinite, on the other hand, is devoid of determinate character (and consequently, as we have seen, is implicitly only, subjective), and consciousness has a merely negative relation to it. Because there is only this relation in observation, it is now argued that it is impossible to know the Absolute, the Truth. A few remarks must be made upon this position.
If possibility and impossibility be taken in so far as they have a definite meaning, they both have reference to the kernel, to the Notion of an object, that which it essentially is. Their meaning must therefore be decided by the nature of the Notion itself. From the point of view of consciousness as observing—from this point of view of observation—the inner nature, the Notion, cannot be discussed, for that point of view renounces the knowledge of what concerns the kernel or inner element of the object; it has only before it that which is included in the sphere of external consciousness as such. Thus possibility and impossibility have no place in this sphere of thought.
Those who occupy this position, however, assert that it is just what is, that is to say, what enters into this
