truth to be the highest knowledge attainable. Belief has a divine right as against enlightenment, the right of absolute self-identity or of pure thought; and it finds itself utterly wronged by enlightenment ; for enlightenment distorts all its moments, and makes them something quite different from what they are in it. Enlightenment, on the other hand, has merely a human right as against belief, and can only put in a human claim for its own truth ; for the wrong it commits is the right of disunion, of discordance, and consists in perverting and altering, a right that belongs to the nature of self-consciousness in opposition to the simple ultimate essence or thought. But since the right of enlightenment is the right of selfconsciousness, it will not merely retain its own right, too, in such a way that two equally valid rights of spirit would be left standing in opposition to one another without either satisfying the claims of the other ; it will maintain the absolute right, because self-consciousness is the negative function of the notion , a function which does not merely operate on its own account, but also gets control over its opposite. And because belief is a mode of consciousness, it will not be able to balk enlightenment of that right. For enlightenment does not operate against the believing mind with special principles of its own, but with those which belief itself implies and contains. Enlightenment merely brings together and presents to belief its own thoughts, the thoughts that lie scattered and apart within belief, all unknown to it. Enlightenment merely reminds belief, when one of its own forms is present, of others it also has, but which it is always forgetting when the one is there. Enlightenment shows itself to belief to be pure insight, by the fact that it, in a given determinate moment, sees the whole, brings forward the opposite element standing in direct relation to that moment and, converting the one into the other, brings out the principle operating negatively on both thoughts the notion. It appears, therefore, to belief to be distortion and lies, because it shows up the other side in the moments of belief. Enlightenment seems, in consequence, directly to make something else out of them than they are in their own particularity ; but this other is equally essential, and in reality is to be found in the believing mind itself, only the latter does not think about it, but keeps it some where else. Hence neither is the result foreign to belief nor can belief reject its truth. Enlightenment itself, however, which reminds belief of the opposite of its various separate moments