should bear a relation to it. This spirit is, however, in the second place really thinking spirit likewise. Thought as such must also develop itself therein, and that really as this form of inmost unity of spirit with itself; thought must come to the distinction and contemplation of this content, and pass over into this form of the purest unity of spirit with itself. At first thought, however, reveals itself as abstract thought alone, and it possesses as such a relation to theology and religion. The content which is here in question, even in so far as it is historic merely and externally accepted, must yet be religious; the unfolding of the nature of God must be present therein. In this we have the further demand that the thought for which the inward nature of God is, should also set itself in relation to this content. But inasmuch as thought is at first understanding and the metaphysic of the understanding, it will remove from the content the rational Idea and make it so empty that only external history remains, which is devoid of interest. The third position arrived at is that of concrete speculative thought. According to the standpoint which has just been given, and as religious feeling and its form are here determined, all speculative content as such, as well as its developments, are at first rejected. And as for the enrichment of the Christian conceptions through the treasures of the philosophy of the ancient world, and through the profound ideas of all earlier oriental religions, and the like,—all this is set aside. The content had objectivity; but this merely signified that the objective content, without subsisting for itself, was to constitute the beginning only, on which the mind had spiritually to build up and sanctify itself. All the enrichment of the content whereby it became philosophic, is thus abandoned, and what follows later simply is that the mind, as thinking, again immerses itself in itself, in order to be concrete and rational. What forms the basis of the Reformation is the abstract moment of a mind being within self, of freedom, of coming to self; freedom signifies the life of the spirit in being turned back within itself in the particular content which appears as another; while spirit is not free if it allows this other-being, either unassimilated or dead, to exist in it as something foreign. In as far as spirit now goes on to knowledge, to spiritual determinations, and as it looks around and comes forth as a content, so far will it conduct itself therein as in its own domain, as in its concrete world, so to speak—and it will there really assert and possess its own. This concrete form of knowledge which, however, in the beginning remains but dim, we have now to consider, and it forms the third period of our treatise, into which we properly step with the Reformation, although Bruno, Vanini and Ramus, who lived later, still belong to the Middle Ages. PART THREE MODERN PHILOSOPHY INTRODUCTION