[5th Paragraph]
Besides, regarding right, ethical life, and the state, the truth is just as old as it is openly displayed and known in public laws, public morality, and religion. What more does this truth need—insofar as the thinking spirit is not satisfied with possessing it in this immediate way—than to also comprehend it and to gain the rational form for the content which is already rational in itself, so that it may appear justified before free thinking? For free thinking does not stop at what is given—be it supported by the external positive authority of the state or the agreement of men, or by the authority of internal feeling and the heart and the immediate concurring witness of the spirit—but proceeds from itself and thereby demands to know itself as united at its innermost with the truth.
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