Abstract
Lecture cycle, a supplement to the Logic, that rehabilitates the proofs of God’s existence against a present-day culture that treats them as antiquated and grounds faith in feeling alone. It examines the cosmological, teleological, and ontological proofs, arguing that the logical is not mere form but the very centre of the religious content.
Traduzione di Ebenezer Brown Speirs · Delphi Classics, 2000 · pubblico dominio
THESE LECTURES ARE devoted to the consideration of the proofs of the existence of God. The occasion for them is this. I had at first to make up my mind to give only one set of lectures in this summer session on philosophical knowledge as a whole, and then afterwards I felt I would like to add a second set on at least one separate subject of knowledge. I have therefore chosen a subject which is connected with the other set of lectures which I gave on logic, and constitutes, not in substance, but in form, a kind of supplement to that set, inasmuch as it is concerned with only a particular aspect of the fundamental conceptions of logic. These lectures are therefore chiefly meant for those of my hearers who were present at the others, and to them they will be most easily intelligible.
But inasmuch as the task we have set ourselves is to consider the proofs of the existence of God, it would appear as if only one aspect of the matter belongs to the subject of logic, namely, the nature of proof. The other, again, the content, which is God Himself, belongs to a different sphere, that of religion, and to the consideration of it by thought, to the philosophy of religion. In point of fact, it is a portion of this branch of knowledge which has to be set apart and treated by itself in these lectures. In what follows it will more clearly be seen what relation this part bears to the entirety of the doctrine of religion; and further, that this doctrine in so far as it is scientific, and what belongs to the sphere of logic, do not fall outside one another to the extent that would appear from the first statement of our aim, and that what is logical does not constitute the merely formal side, but, in fact, occupies the very centre point of the content.
The first thing we encounter when we seek to make a beginning with the execution of our design is the general, and, so far as this design is concerned, repugnant, point of view of the prepossessions of present-day culture. If the object, God, is in itself capable of producing exaltation of mind by its very name, and of stirring our soul to its innermost depths, our lofty expectation may just as quickly die away when we reflect that it is the proofs of the existence of God with which we are about to concern ourselves. For the proofs of the existence of God are to such an extent fallen into discredit that they pass for something antiquated, belonging to the metaphysics of days gone by; a barren desert, out of which we have escaped and brought ourselves back to a living faith; the region of arid Understanding, out of which we have once more raised ourselves to the warm feeling of religion. The attempt to renovate, by means of new applications and artifices of an acute Understanding, those rotten props of our belief that there is a God, which have passed for proofs, or to improve the places which have become weak through attacks and counter-proofs, could of itself gain no favour merely by its good intention. For it is not this or that proof, or this or that form and way of putting it, that has lost its weight, but the very proving of religious truth has so much lost credit with the mode of thought peculiar to our time that the impossibility of such proof is already a generally accepted opinion. Nay more, it has come to be regarded as irreligious to place confidence in such reasoned knowledge, and to seek by such a path to reach a sure conviction regarding God and His nature, or even regarding His mere existence. This business of proof, therefore, is so much out of date, that the proofs themselves are barely even historically known here and there; and even to theologians, that is to say, people who desire to have a scientific acquaintance with religious truths, they are sometimes unknown.
The proofs of the existence of God have originated in the necessity of satisfying thought and reason. But this necessity has assumed, in modern culture, quite a different position from that which it had formerly, and those points of view must first of all be considered which have presented themselves in this reference. Yet since they are known in their general aspects, and this is not the place to follow them back to their foundations, we need only recall them, and, in fact, limit ourselves to the form which they assume within the sphere of Christianity. It is in this region that the conflict between faith and reason in Man himself first finds a basis, and that doubt enters his soul, and can reach the fearful height of depriving him of all peace. Thought must indeed touch the earlier religions of imagination, as we may shortly call them; it must turn itself with its opposite principles directly against their sensuous pictures and all else in them. The contradictions, the strife and enmity which have thus arisen belong to the external history of philosophy. But the collisions between philosophy and religion here get the length of hostility merely, and have not come to be that inner division of mind and feeling, such as we see in Christianity, where the two sides which come into contradiction get possession of the depth of the Spirit as their single and consequently common source, and in this position, bound together in their contradiction, are able to disturb this spot itself, the Spirit in its inmost nature. The expression “faith” is reserved for Christianity; we do not speak of Greek or Egyptian faith, or of a faith in Zeus or Apis. Faith expresses the inwardness of certainty, and certainty of the deepest and most concentrated kind, as distinguished from all other opinion, conception, persuasion, or volition. This inwardness, at once as being what is deepest and at the same time most abstract, comprises thought itself; a contradiction of this faith by thought is therefore the most painful of all divisions in the depths of the Spirit.
Yet such misery is happily, if we may so express ourselves, not the only form in which the relation of faith and knowledge is to be found. On the contrary, this relation presents itself in a peaceful form, in the conviction that revelation, faith, positive religion, and, on the other hand, reason and thought in general, must not be in contradiction, and not only that they may be in harmony, but also that God does not so contradict Himself in His works, cannot so contradict Himself, as that the human Spirit in its essence, in its thinking reason, in that which it must have come from the very first to regard as divine in itself, could get into conflict with what has come to it through greater enlightenment about the nature of God and Man’s relation to that nature. During the whole of the Middle Ages, theology was understood to mean nothing else than a scientific knowledge of Christian truths, that is to say, a knowledge essentially connected with philosophy. The Middle Ages were far enough away from taking the historical knowledge of faith for scientific knowledge; in the Fathers and in what may be reckoned generally as historical material, they sought only authorities, edification, and information on the doctrines of the Church. The opposite tendency is simply to search out the human origin of the articles of faith by the historical treatment of the older evidences and works of every kind, and in this way to reduce them to the minimum of their most primitive form. This form must be regarded as wholly unfruitful in deeper knowledge and development, because it is in contradiction with that Spirit, which, after the removal of that primitive form as something immediately present, had been poured out on the adherents of these doctrines, in order to lead them now, for the first time, into all truth. The tendency here described was unknown in these times. In the belief in the unity of this Spirit with itself, the whole of these doctrines, even those which are most abstruse for reason, are regarded from the point of view of thinking, and the attempt is made, in the case of all of these which are recognised as in themselves the content of belief, to prove them on rational grounds. The great theologian Anselm of Canterbury, whom we shall have to consider elsewhere, declares in this sense that, if we are firm in the faith, it is idleness, negligentiæ mihi esse videtur, not to know what we believe. In the Protestant Church it has in the same way come about that the rational knowledge of religious truths is cherished and held in honour in combination with theology or along with it. The point of interest was to see how far the natural light of reason, human reason by itself, could progress in the knowledge of the truth, with the important reservation that through religion Man can learn higher truths than reason is in a position to discover of itself.
Here we come upon two distinct spheres, and, to begin with, a peaceful relation between them is justified by means of the distinction that the teachings of positive religion are above but not against reason. This activity of thinking knowledge found itself stimulated and supported from without through the example which lay before its eyes in the pre-Christian, or, speaking generally, non-Christian religions. This showed that the human spirit, even when left to itself, has attained to deep insight into the nature of God, and with all its errors has arrived at great truths, even at fundamental truths, such as the existence of God and the purer idea, free from sensuous ingredients, of that existence, the immortality of the soul, providence, and such like. Thus positive doctrine and the rational knowledge of religious truths have been peacefully pursued alongside of one another. This position of reason in relation to dogma was, however, different from that confidence of reason which was first considered, which dared to approach the highest mysteries of doctrine, such as the Trinity, and the incarnation of Christ; whereas, on the contrary, the point of view referred to after the one just mentioned timidly confined itself to the business of merely venturing through the medium of thought to deal with what the Christian religion possesses in common with heathen and non-Christian religions in general, and what must therefore remain a part merely of what is abstract in religion. But when once we have become conscious of the difference of these two spheres, we must pronounce the relation of equality in which faith and reason are to be regarded as standing each alongside of the other, to be unintelligible, or else to be a misleading pretence. The tendency of thought to seek unity leads of necessity to the comparison of these spheres first of all, and then when they once pass for different, to the agreement of faith with itself alone, and of thought with itself alone, so that each sphere refuses to recognise the other and rejects it. It is one of the commonest self-deceptions of the Understanding to regard the element of difference, which is found in the one central point of Spirit, as though it must not necessarily advance to opposition and so to contradiction. The point at which the conflict on the part of Spirit begins has been reached as soon as what is concrete in Spirit has, by means of analysis, attained to the consciousness of difference. All that partakes of Spirit is concrete; in this we have before us the Spiritual in its most profound aspect, that of Spirit as the concrete element of faith and thought. The two are not only mixed up in the most manifold way, in immediate passing over from one side to the other, but are so inwardly bound up together that there is no faith which does not contain within itself reflection, argumentation, or, in fact, thought, and, on the other hand, no thinking which does not, even if it be only for the moment, contain faith, — for faith in general is the form of any presupposition, of any assumption, come whence it may, which lies firmly at the foundation — momentary faith. This means that even in free thinking that which now exists as a presupposition, is a comprehended result, thought out either before or after, but in this transformation of the presupposition into a result, again has a side which is a presupposition, an assumption or unconscious immediacy of the activity of the Spirit.
Yet the explanation of the nature of free self-conscious thought we must here leave on one side, and rather remark that for the attainment of this essentially and actually existent union of faith and thought a long time has been necessary — more than fifteen hundred years — and that it has cost the most severe toil to reach the point at which thought has escaped from its absorption in faith, and attained to the abstract consciousness of its freedom, and thereby of its independence and its complete self-sufficiency, in the light of which nothing can have validity for thought which has not come before its judgment-seat, and been then justified as admissible. Thought thus taking its stand upon the extreme point of its freedom — and it is only completely free in this extreme point — and rejecting authority and faith in general, has driven faith in like manner to take its stand in an abstract fashion upon itself, and to attempt entirely to free itself from thought. At all events, it has arrived at the point of declaring itself to be freed from and not to require thought. Wrapped up in unconsciousness of the at all events small amount of thought which must remain to it, it goes on to declare thought to be incapable of reaching truth and destructive of it, so that thought is capable of comprehending one thing only, its incapacity to grasp the truth and see into it, and of proving to itself its own nothingness, with the result that suicide is its highest vocation. So completely has the relation in the view of the time been reversed, that faith has now become exalted as immediate knowledge in opposition to thought, as the only means of attaining to the truth, just as formerly, on the other hand, only that could give peace to Man of which he could become conscious as truth through proof by thought.
This standpoint of opposition cannot better show how important and far-reaching it is than when it is considered in relation to the subject which we have set ourselves to discuss, the knowledge of God. In the working out into opposition of the difference between faith and thought, it is immediately apparent that they have reached formal extremes in which abstraction is made from all content, so that in the first instance they are no longer opposed as concretely defined religious faith and thought about religious subjects, but abstractly, as faith in general, and as thought in general, or knowledge, in so far as this last does not yield merely forms of thought, but gives us a content in and with its truth. From this point of view the knowledge of God is made dependent on the question as to the nature of knowledge in general, and before we can pass to the investigation of the concrete it seems necessary to ascertain whether the consciousness of what is true can and must be thinking knowledge, or, faith. Our proposed consideration of the knowledge of the existence of God thus changed into this general consideration of knowledge, just as the new philosophical epoch has made it the beginning and foundation of all philosophical speculation that the nature of knowledge itself is to be examined before the actual, i.e., concrete knowledge of an object. We thus incurred the danger — a danger, however, necessary in the interests of thoroughness — of having to trace the subject further back than the time at our disposal for carrying out the aim of these lectures would permit of our doing. If, however, we look more closely at the demand which appears to have met us, it becomes perfectly plain that it is only the subject that has changed with it, not the thing. In both cases, either if we admitted the demand for that inquiry, or stuck directly to our theme, we should have to know, and in that case we should have a subject, too, in the shape of knowledge itself. And as in doing so we should not have emerged from the activity of knowledge, from real knowledge, there is nothing to hinder our leaving the other subject which it is not our aim to consider, alone, and thus stick to our own subject. It will further appear, as we follow out our purpose, that the knowledge of our subject will also in itself justify itself as knowledge. That in true and real knowledge the justification of knowledge will and must lie, might admittedly be said in advance, for to say so is simply a tautology, just as we may know in advance that the desired way round, the desiring to know knowledge before actual knowledge, is superfluous just because it is inherently absurd. If under the process of knowledge we figure to ourselves an external operation in which it is brought into a merely mechanical relation with an object, that is to say, remains outside it, and is only externally applied to it, knowledge is presented in such a relation as a particular thing for itself, so that it may well be that its forms have nothing in common with the qualities of the object; and thus when it concerns itself with an object, it remains only in its own forms, and does not reach the essential qualities of the object, that is to say, does not become real knowledge of it. In such a relation knowledge is determined as finite, and as of the finite; in its object there remains something essentially inner, whose notion is thus unattainable by and foreign to knowledge, which finds here its limit and its end, and is on that account limited and finite. But to take such a relation as the only one, or as final or absolute, is a purely made-up and unjustifiable assumption of the Understanding. Real knowledge, inasmuch as it does not remain outside the object, but in point of fact occupies itself with it, must be immanent in the object, the proper movement of its nature, only expressed in the form of thought and taken up into consciousness.
We have now provisionally indicated those standpoints of culture which in the case of such material as we have before us ought in the present day to be taken into account. It is pre-eminently, or, properly speaking, only here that it is self-evident that the proposition already laid down, according to which the consideration of knowledge is not different from the consideration of its object, must hold good without limitation. I will therefore at once indicate the general sense in which the proposed theme, the proofs of the existence of God, is taken, and which will be shown to be the true one. It is that they ought to comprise the elevation of the human spirit to God, and express it for thought, just as the elevation itself is an elevation of thought and into the kingdom of thought.
And to begin with, as regards knowledge, Man is essentially consciousness, and thus what is felt, the content, the determinateness which a feeling or sensation has, is also in consciousness as something presented in the form of an idea. That in virtue of which feeling is religious feeling, is the divine content; it is therefore essentially something of which we have knowledge. But this content is in its essence no sensuous perception or sensuous idea; it does not exist for imagination, but only for thought; God is Spirit, only for Spirit, and only for pure Spirit, that is, for thought. This is the root of such a content, even though imagination and even sense-perception may afterwards accompany it, and this content itself may enter into feeling. It is the elevation of the thinking Spirit to that which is the highest thought, to God, that we thus wish to consider.
This elevation is besides essentially rooted in the nature of our mind. It is necessary to it, and it is this necessity that we have before us in this elevation, and the setting forth of this necessity itself is nothing else than what we call proof. Therefore we have not to prove this elevation from the outside; it proves itself in itself, and this means nothing else than that it is by its very nature necessary. We have only to look to its own process, and we have there, since it is necessary in itself, the necessity, insight into the nature of which has to be vouched for by proof.
IF THE UNDERTAKING which is commonly called proof of the existence of God has been understood in the form in which it was set forth in the first lecture, the chief objection to it will have been got rid of. For the nature of proof was held to consist in this, that it is only the consciousness of the proper movement of the object in itself. If this thought might be attended with difficulties in its application to other objects, these difficulties would necessarily disappear in the case of the object with which we are concerned, for it is not a passive and external object, but really a subjective movement, the elevation of the Spirit to God, an activity, the following of a certain course, a process, and thus has in it that necessary procedure which constitutes proof, and which has only to be taken up and studied in order that it may be seen to involve proof. But the expression proof carries with it too definitely the idea of a merely subjective line of thought to be followed on our behoof, to allow of the conception of it just stated being considered sufficient in itself apart from any attempt to expressly examine and get rid of this contrasted idea. In this lecture, then, we must first come to an understanding about the nature of proof in general, and with especial definiteness as regards that aspect of it which we here put aside and exclude. It is not our business to assert that there is no proof of the kind indicated, but to assign its limits, and to see that it is not, as is falsely thought, the only form of proof. This is bound up with the contrast drawn between immediate and mediated knowledge, in which in our time the chief interest centres in connection with religious knowledge, and even the religious frame of mind itself, which must accordingly be likewise considered.
The distinction, which has already been touched upon in connection with knowledge, implies that two kinds of proof must be taken into account, of which the one is clearly that which we use simply as an aid to knowledge, as something subjective, whose activity and movement have their place within ourselves, and are not the peculiar movement of the thing considered. That this kind of proof finds a place in the scientific knowledge of finite things and their finite content, becomes apparent when we examine the nature of the procedure more closely. Let us take for this purpose an example from a science in which this method of proof is admittedly applied in its most complete form. If we prove a geometrical proposition every part of the proof must in part carry its justification within itself, so also when we solve an equation in algebra. In part, however, the whole course of procedure is defined and justified through the aim which we have in connection with this, and because that end is attained by such procedure. But we are very well aware that that of which the quantitive value has been developed out of the equation, has not as an actual thing run through these operations in order to reach the quantity which it possesses, and that the magnitude of the geometrical lines, angles, and so on, has not gone through and been brought about by the series of propositions by which we have arrived at it as representing a result. The necessity which we see in such proof corresponds indeed to the individual properties of the object itself, these relations of quantity actually belong to it; but the progress in connecting the one with the other is something which goes on entirely within us; it is a process for realising the aim we have in view, namely, to see into the meaning of the thing, not a course in which the object arrives at its inherent relations and their connection. It does not thus create itself, and is not created, as we create it and its relations in the process of attaining insight into it.
Besides proof proper, of which the essential characteristic — for this is all that is necessary for the purpose of our investigation — has been brought out, we find further, that in the region of finite knowledge the term proof is also applied to what, when more closely examined, is only the indicating of something, the pointing out of an idea, a proposition, a law, and so on in experience. Historical proof we do not require from the point of view from which we here consider knowledge, to elaborate in detail; it depends for its material on experience, or rather perception. Looked at in one light, it makes no difference that it has reference to foreign perceptions and their evidences; argumentation, that is to say, the exercise of understanding proper regarding the objective connection of circumstances and actions, makes these data into presuppositions and fundamental assumptions, just as its criticism of evidences has done in drawing its conclusions. But in so far as argument and criticism constitute the other essential side of historical proof, such proof treats its data as being the ideas of other people; the subjective element directly enters into the material, and the reasoning about and combination of that material is likewise subjective activity; so that the course and activity of knowledge has quite different ingredients from the course followed by the circumstances themselves. As regards the pointing things out in everyday experience, this is certainly concerned, in the first instance, with individual perceptions, observations, and so on, that is to say, with the kind of material which is only pointed out, but its interest is by so doing to prove further that there are in Nature and in Spirit such species and kinds, such laws, forces, faculties, and activities as are mentioned in the sciences. We pass by the metaphysical or common psychological reflections about that subjective element of sense, external and internal, which accompanies perception. But the material, however, in so far as it enters into the sciences, is not so left to itself as it is in the senses and in perception. On the contrary, the content of the sciences — the species, kinds, laws, forces, and so on — is built up out of that material, which is, perhaps, already called by the name of phenomena, by putting together through analysis what is common, the leaving aside of what is not essential, the retention of what is called essential, without any certain test having been applied to distinguish between what is to be regarded as non-essential and what as essential. It is admitted that what is perceived does not itself make these abstractions, does not compare its individuals (or individual positions, circumstances, and so on), or put what is common in them together; that therefore a great part of the activity of knowledge is a subjective affair, just as in the content which has been obtained a part of its definitions, as being logical forms, are the product of this subjective activity. The expression “predicate,” or mark (Merkmal), if people will still use this stupid expression, directly indicates a subjective purpose of isolating properties for our use in marking distinctions, while others, which likewise exist in the object, are put aside. This expression is to be called stupid, because the definitions of species and kinds directly pass for something essential and objective, and not as existing merely for us who mark distinctions. We may certainly also express ourselves by saying that the species leaves aside, in one kind, properties which it places in another, or that energy in one form of its manifestation leaves aside circumstances which are present in another, that these circumstances are thus shown by it to be unessential, and it of itself gives up the form of its manifestation, and withdraws itself into inactivity or self-containedness; that thus, for example, the law of the motion of the heavenly bodies penetrates to every single place and every moment in which the heavenly body occupies that place, and just by this continual abstraction shows itself to be a law. If we thus look on abstraction as objective activity, which it so far is, it is yet very different from subjective activity and its products. The former leaves the heavenly body to fall back again after abstraction from this particular place and this particular moment into the particular changing place and moment of time, just as the species may appear in the kind in other contingent or unessential forms and in the external particularity of individuals. On the other hand, subjective abstraction raises the law like the species into its universality as such, and makes it exist and preserves it in this form, in the mind.
In these forms of the knowledge which progresses from mere indication to proof, from immediate objectivity to special products, the necessity may be felt of considering explicitly the method, the nature, and fashion of the subjective activity, in order to test its claims and procedure; for this method has its own characteristics and kind of progress which are quite different from the characteristics and process of the object in itself. And without entering more particularly into the nature of this method of knowledge, it becomes immediately apparent, from a single characteristic which we observe in it, that inasmuch as it is represented as being concerned with the object in accordance with subjective forms, it is only capable of apprehending relations of the object. It is therefore idle to start the question whether these relations are objective and real or only subjective and ideal, not to mention the fact that such expressions as subjectivity and objectivity, reality and ideality, are simply vague abstractions. The content, be it objective or merely subjective, real or ideal, remains always the same, an aggregate of relations, not something that is in-and-for-itself, the notion of the thing, or the infinite, with which knowledge must have to do. If that content of knowledge is taken by perverted sense as containing relations only, and these are understood to be phenomena or relations to a faculty of subjective knowledge, it must, so far as results are concerned, always be recognised as representing the great intellectual advance which modern philosophy has achieved, that the mode of thinking, proving, and knowing the infinite, which has been described, is proved incapable of reaching what is eternal and divine.
What has been brought out in the preceding exposition regarding knowledge in general, and especially what relates to thinking knowledge (which is what alone concerns us), and to proof, the principal moment in that knowledge, we have looked at from the point of view from which it is seen to be a movement of the activity of thought which is outside the object and different from the development of the object itself. This definition may in part be taken to be sufficient for our purpose, but partly, too, it is to be taken as what is essential in opposition to the one-sidedness which lies in the reflections about the subjectivity of knowledge.
In the opposition of the process of knowledge to the object to be known lies the finiteness of knowledge. But this opposition is not on that account to be regarded as itself infinite and absolute, and its products are not to be taken to be appearances only because of the mere abstraction of subjectivity; but in so far as they themselves are determined by that opposition, the content as such is affected by the externality referred to. This point of view has an effect upon the nature of the content, and yields a definite insight into it; while, on the contrary, the other way of looking at the question gives us nothing but the abstract category of the subjective, which is, moreover, taken to be absolute. What we thus get as the result of the way in which we look at the proof, for the otherwise quite general quality of the content, is, speaking generally, just this, that the content, inasmuch as it bears an external relation to knowledge, is itself determined as something external, or, to put it more definitely, consists of abstractions from finite properties. Mathematical content as such is essentially magnitude. Geometrical figures pertain to space, and have thus in themselves externality as their principle, since they are distinguished from real objects, and represent only the one-sided spatiality of these objects, as distinguished from their concrete filling up, through which they first became real. So number has the unit for its principle, and is the putting together of a multiplicity of units which are independent, and is thus a completely external combination. The knowledge which we have here before us can only attain its greatest perfection in this field, because that field contains only simple and definite qualities, and the dependence of these upon each other, the insight into the nature of which is proof, is thus stable, and ensures for proof the logical progress of necessity. This kind of knowledge is capable of exhausting the nature of its objects. The logical nature of the process of proof is not, however, confined to mathematical content, but enters into all departments of natural and spiritual material; but we may sum up what is logical in knowledge in connection with proof by saying that it depends on the rules of inference; the proofs of the existence of God are therefore essentially inferences. The express investigation of these forms belongs, however, partly to logic, and for the rest the nature of the fundamental defect must be ascertained in the course of the examination of these proofs which is about to be taken in hand. For the present it is enough to remark further, in connection with what has been said, that the rules of inference have a kind of foundation which is of the nature of mathematical calculation. The connection of propositions which are requisite to constitute a syllogistic conclusion depends on the relations of the sphere which each of them occupies as regards the other, and which is quite properly regarded as greater or smaller. The definite extent of such a sphere is what determines the correctness of the subsumption. The older logicians, such as Lambert and Ploucquet, have been at the pains of inventing a notation by means of which the relation in inference may be reduced to that of identity, that is, to the abstract mathematical relation of equality, so that inference is shown to be the mechanism of a kind of calculation. As regards, however, the further nature of knowledge in such an external connection of objects, which in their very nature are external in themselves, we shall have to speak of it presently under the name of mediate knowledge, and to consider the opposition in its more definite form.
As regards these forms which are called species, laws, forces, and so on, knowledge does not stand to them in an external relation; they are rather its products. But the knowledge which produces them, as has been shown, produces them only by abstraction from what is objective; they have their root in this, but are essentially separated from what is actual; they are more concrete than mathematical figures, but their content differs essentially from that from which the start was made, and which must constitute their only foundation of proof.
The defective element in this mode of knowledge has thus attention drawn to it in a different form from that shown in the way of looking at it, which declares the products of knowledge to be mere phenomena, because knowledge itself is only a subjective activity. But the general result, however, is the same, and we have now to see what has been set over against this result. What is determined as insufficient for the aim of the Spirit, which is the absorption into its very nature of what is infinite, eternal, divine, is the activity of the Spirit which in thinking proceeds by means of abstraction, inference, and proof. This view, itself the product of the mode of thought characteristic of the period, has jumped straight over to the other extreme in giving out a proofless, immediate knowledge, an unreasoning faith, a feeling devoid of thought, as the only way of grasping and having within oneself divine truth. It is asserted that that kind of knowledge which is insufficient for the higher kind of truth is the exclusive and sole kind of knowledge. The two assumptions are most closely connected. On the one side, we have, in the investigation of what we have undertaken to consider, to free that knowledge from its one-sidedness, and in doing so at the same time to show by facts that there exists another kind of knowledge than that which is given out as the only kind. On the other side, the pretension which faith as such sets up against knowledge is a prejudice which occupies too firm and sure a position not to make a stricter investigation necessary. In view of this pretension it must be borne in mind that the true, unsophisticated faith, the more it in case of dire necessity might reasonably make pretensions, the less it does make them, and that the case of necessity exists only for the merely rationalising, dry, and polemical assertion of faith.
But I have elsewhere already explained how the matter stands as regards that faith or immediate knowledge. It is not possible that in the forefront of any attempt to deal at the present time with the proofs of the existence of God, the position taken up by faith can be set aside as done with; the chief points from which it is to be criticised, and the place to be assigned to it, must at least be called to mind.
IT HAS ALREADY been remarked that the assertion of faith, of which we have to speak, is found outside of genuine simple faith. This latter, in so far as it has advanced to conscious knowledge, and has consequently acquired a consciousness of knowledge, accedes to knowledge with full confidence in it, because it is pre-eminently full of confidence in itself, is sure of itself, and firmly established in itself. We are rather concerned with faith in so far as it takes up a polemical attitude towards rational knowledge, and expresses itself in a polemical fashion even against knowledge in general. It is thus not a faith which opposes itself to another kind of faith. Faith (or belief) is what is common to both; it is therefore the content which fights against the content. But this fact of having to do with content at once brings knowledge with it. If it were otherwise, the overthrow and defence of the truth of religion would not be carried out with external weapons, which are just as foreign to faith and religion as to knowledge. The faith which rejects knowledge as such, is just because of this devoid of content, and is, to begin with, to be taken abstractly as faith in general, as it opposes itself to concrete knowledge, to rational knowledge, without reference to content. As thus abstract, it is removed back into the simplicity of self-consciousness. This is in its simplicity, in so far as it has any fulness at all, feeling, and what is content in knowledge is definiteness of feeling. The assertion of abstract faith thus leads immediately to the form of feeling, in which the subjectivity of knowledge intrenches itself as in an inaccessible place. The standpoints of both must therefore be briefly indicated, from which their one-sidedness, and consequently the untruth of the fashion in which they are asserted to be ultimate and fundamental determinations, becomes apparent. Faith, to begin with it, starts from this, that the nullity of knowledge, so far as absolute truth is concerned, has been demonstrated. We wish so to proceed as to leave faith in possession of this assumption, and to see accordingly what it is in itself.
To begin with, if the opposition is conceived of as being of such an absolutely general kind as that between faith and knowledge, as we often hear it put, this abstraction must be directly found fault with. For faith belongs to consciousness; we know about what we believe; nay, we know about it with certainty. It is thus at once apparent that it is absurd to wish to separate faith and knowledge in such a general fashion.
But faith is now called immediate knowledge, and is accordingly to be distinguished radically from mediate and mediating knowledge. Since at this stage we leave on one side the speculative examination of these conceptions, in order to keep within the proper sphere of this kind of assertion, we will oppose to this separation, which is asserted to be absolute, the fact that there is no act of knowledge, any more than there is any act of sensation, conception, or volition, no activity, property, or condition pertaining to Spirit, which is not mediated and mediating; just as there is no other object in Nature or Spirit, be it what it may, in heaven or the earth, or under the earth, which does not include within itself the quality of mediation as well as that of immediacy. It is thus as a universal fact that logical philosophy presents it — we might add, along with the exhibition of its necessity, to which we need not here appeal — in the completed circle of the forms of thought. As regards the matter of sense, whether it belongs to outer or inner perception, it is admitted that it is finite, that is, that it exists only as mediated through what is other than sense. But of this matter itself, and still more of the higher content of Spirit, it will be admitted that it derives its essential character from categories, and that the nature of this character is shown in logic to be the possession of the moment of mediation above indicated inseparably in itself. But we pause here to call attention to the absolutely universal fact, in whatever sense and with whatever meaning the facts may be understood. Without digressing into examples, we abide by the one object which here lies nearest to us.
God is activity, free activity relating itself to itself, and remaining with itself. The essential element in the notion or conception of God, or, for that matter, in every idea of God, is that He is Himself, the mediation of Himself with Himself. If God is defined merely as the Creator, His activity is taken only as going out of itself, as expanding itself out of itself, as sensible or material producing, without any return into itself. The product is something different from Him, it is the world; the introduction of the category of mediation would at once bring with it the idea that God must be through the medium of the world; one might, at all events, say with truth that He is Creator only by means of the world, or what He creates. Only this would be mere empty tautology; for the category, “that which is created,” is itself directly involved in the first category, that of the Creator. On the other hand, what is created remains, so far as the ordinary idea of it is concerned, as a world outside God, as an Other over against Him, so that He exists away beyond that world, apart from it, in-and-for-Himself. But in Christianity least of all is it true that we have to know God only as creation, activity, not as Spirit. The fact rather is that to this religion, the explicit consciousness that God is Spirit is peculiar, the consciousness that He, even as He is in-and-for-Himself, relates Himself, as it were, to the Other of Himself (called the Son), to Himself, that He is related to Himself in Himself as love, essentially as this love is mediation with itself. God is indeed the Creator of the world, and is so sufficiently defined. But God is more than this; He is the true God in that He is the mediation of Himself with Himself, and is this love.
Faith, then, inasmuch as it has God as the object of its consciousness, has this mediation for its object; just as faith, as existing in the individual, only exists through teaching and training, the teaching and training of men, but still more through the teaching and training of the Spirit of God, and exists only through this process of mediation. But faith, like consciousness in general, this relation of the subject to an object, is quite abstract, whether God is its object, or whatever thing or content may be the object, and so faith or knowledge only exists through the medium of an object. Otherwise we have empty identity, a faith in or knowledge of nothing.
But conversely there is to be found here the other fact that, in like manner, there can be nothing which is only and exclusively the product of mediation. If we examine into what we understand by immediacy, it will be seen that it must exist in itself without any difference, such as that through which mediation is at once posited. It is simple reference to self, and is thus in its immediate form merely Being. Now all knowledge, mediate and immediate, and indeed everything else, at all events is; and that it is, is itself the least and most abstract thing that one can say of anything. If it is even only subjective, as faith or knowledge is, at all events it is, the predicate of Being belongs to it, just as such Being appertains to the object which exists only in faith or knowledge. The insight involved in this view is of a very simple kind. Yet we may be impatient with philosophy just because of this simplicity, in so far as we pass from the fulness and warmth which belong to faith, over to such abstractions as Being and immediacy. But, in point of fact, this is not the fault of philosophy; on the contrary, it is that assertion of faith and immediate knowledge which takes its stand on these abstractions. In this fact, that faith is not mediate knowledge, there lies the entire value of the matter, and the verdict passed upon it. But we come also to the content, or rather, we may likewise come only to the relation of a content, to knowledge.
It is further to be remarked that immediacy in knowledge, which is faith, has this further quality, that faith knows that in which it believes, not merely generally, not merely in the sense of having an idea or knowledge from without of it, but knows it with certainty. It is in certainty that the nerve of faith lies. And here we encounter a further distinction, we further distinguish truth from certainty. We know very well that much has been known, and is known for certain, which is nevertheless not true. Men have long enough known it to be certain, and millions still know it to be certain, to take a trivial example, that the sun goes round the earth. And what is more, the Egyptians believed, and knew it for certain, that Apis was a great or the greatest god; while the Greeks thought the same regarding Jupiter; just as the Hindus still know for certain that the cow, and other inhabitants of India, the Mongols and many races, that a man, the Dalai-Lama, is God. That this certainty is expressed and asserted is admitted. A man may quite well say, I know something for certain, I believe it, it is true. But, at the same time, every one else must be allowed the right to say the same thing, for every one is “I,” every one knows, every one knows for certain. But this unavoidable admission expresses the truth that this knowledge, knowledge for certain, this abstraction, may have a content of the most diverse and opposite kind, and the proof of the content must lie just in this assurance of being certain, of faith. But what man will come forward and say, Only that which I know and know as certain is true; what I know as certain is true just because I know it as certain. Truth stands eternally over against mere certainty, and neither certainty, nor immediate knowledge, nor faith decides what is truth. Christ directed the minds of the Apostles and His friends away from the genuinely immediate visible certainty which they derived from His immediate presence, from His own sayings and spoken words heard with their ears and apprehended through their senses and feelings, away from such a faith and such a source of faith to the truth, into which they were to be led only in the further future and through the Spirit. For the attainment of anything more in addition to this highest certainty, derived from the source above indicated, there exists nothing except just what is in the content itself.
Faith, in so far as it is defined to be immediate knowledge, as distinguished from what is mediate, reduces itself to the abstract formalism above mentioned. This abstraction makes it possible not only to rank as faith the sensuous certainty which I have that I possess a body, and that there are things outside me, but to deduce or prove from it what the nature of faith is. But we should do gross injustice to what in the sphere of religion is termed faith if we were to see in it only this abstraction. Faith must rather be full of substance; it must be a content, and this is to be a true content; it must be far removed from such a content as the sensuous certainty that I have a body, that things perceived by the senses surround me. It must contain the truth, and quite a different truth from that last mentioned, the truth of finite things of sense, and derived from quite a different source. The tendency above indicated to formal subjectivity must find faith as such even too objective, for this latter has always to do with ideas of things, with a knowledge of them, with a state of conviction regarding some content. This extreme form of the subjective, in which the definite form of the content and the conception and knowledge of it have vanished, is that of feeling. We cannot, therefore, avoid speaking of it too; it is this form, moreover, which is asked for in our times, not feeling of the simple or naive kind, but as a result of culture, derived from grounds or reasons which are the same as those already referred to.
AS HAS BEEN shown in the preceding lecture, the form of feeling is closely related to mere faith as such. It is the yet more intensive forcing back of self-consciousness into itself, the development of the content to mere definiteness of feeling.
Religion must be felt, must exist in feeling, otherwise it is not religion; faith cannot exist without feeling, otherwise it is not religion. This must be admitted to be true, for feeling is nothing but my subjectivity in its simplicity and immediacy — myself as this particular existent personality. If I have religion only as idea, faith takes the form of certainty about these ideas; its content is before me, it is still an object over against me; it is not yet identical with me as simple self; I am not so penetrated through and through with it that it constitutes my qualitative, determinate character. The very inmost unity of the content of faith with me is requisite in order that I may have quality or substance, its substance. It thus becomes my feeling. As against religion Man must hold nothing in reserve for himself, for it is the innermost region of truth. Religion must therefore possess not only this as yet abstract “I,” which even as faith is yet knowledge, but the concrete “I” in its simple personality, comprehending the whole of it in itself. Feeling is this inwardness which is not separated in itself.
Feeling is, however, understood to have the property of being something purely individual, lasting for a single moment, just as one individual thing in the process of alternation with another exists either after that other or alongside of it. But the heart signifies the all-embracing unity of the feelings, both in their quantity and also as regards their duration in time. The heart is the ground or basis which contains in itself and preserves the essential nature of feelings, independent of the fleeting nature of their succession in consciousness. In this their unbroken unity — for the heart expresses the simple pulse of the living spirit — religion is able to penetrate the different kinds of feeling, and to become for them the substance which holds, masters, and rules them.
But this brings us at once to the reflection that feeling and heart as such are only the one side, definite forms of feeling and heart being the other. And, accordingly, we must at once go further and say, that just as little is religion true, because it exists in our feelings or hearts, as because it is believed and known immediately and for certain. All religions, even the most false and unworthy, exist in our feelings and hearts just as much as those that are true. There are feelings which are immoral, unjust, and godless, just as much as there are feelings which are moral, just, and pious. Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murder, adultery, backbiting, and so forth; that is to say, the fact that thoughts are not bad, but good, does not depend on their being in the heart and proceeding out of it. We have to do with the definite form which is assumed by the feeling which is in the heart. This is a truism so trivial that one hesitates to give it expression, but it is part of philosophical culture to carry the analysis of ideas even to the length of questioning and denying what is most simple and most commonly received. To that shallow type of thought or Enlightenment which is vain of its boldness, it appears unmeaning and unseemly to recall trivial truths, such, for instance, as that which may be here once more brought to mind, the truth that Man is distinguished from the brute by the faculty of thought, but shares that of feeling with it. If feeling is religious feeling, religion is its definite quality. If it is wicked, bad feeling, what is bad and wicked is its definite quality. It is this determinate quality which forms the content for consciousness, what in the words already used is called thought. Feeling is bad on account of its bad content; the heart, because of its sinful thoughts. Feeling is the common form for the most different kinds of content. It can on that account just as little serve as a justification for any of its determinate qualities, for its content, as can immediate certainty.
Feeling makes itself known as a subjective form, as being something in me, while I am the subject of something. This form is that which is simple, which remains equal to itself, and therefore potentially indeterminate in every difference of content — the abstraction of my existence as a single individual. The determinateness or special character of the feeling is, on the contrary, to begin with, difference in general, the being unlike some other, being manifold. It must therefore be explicitly distinguished from the general form whose particular and definite quality it is, and be regarded on its own account. It has the form of the content which must be regarded “on its own merits,” and judged on its own account; on this value depends the value of the feeling. This content must be true, to begin with, and independently of the feeling, just as religion is true on its own account — it is what is in itself necessary and universal — the Thing or true fact which develops itself to a kingdom of truths and of laws, as well as to a kingdom of their knowledge and their final ground, God.
I shall indicate only in outline the consequences which ensue if immediate knowledge and feeling as such are elevated into a principle. It is their very concentration which carries with it for the content, simplification, abstraction, and indefiniteness. Thus they both reduce the divine content, be it religious as such, or legal and moral, to a minimum, to what is most abstract. With this the determination of the content becomes arbitrary, for in that minimum there exists nothing determinate. This is a weighty consequence, from a theoretical as well as a practical point of view. Chiefly from a practical, for since, for the justification of disposition and action, reasons are necessary, the faculty of argument must still be very untrained, and very little skilled in its work, if it does not know how to assign good reasons for what is arbitrary.
Another feature in the situation, which the withdrawal into immediate knowledge and into feeling brings into view, concerns the relation of men to other men, and their spiritual fellowship. The objective, the true fact or Thing, is what is in-and-for-itself universal, and is so, therefore, for all. As what is most universal, it is implicitly thought in general; and thought is the common basis. The man who betakes himself to feeling, to immediate knowledge, to his own ideas or his own thoughts, shuts himself up, as I have already said, in his own particularity, and breaks off any fellowship or community with others — the only way is to leave him alone. But this kind of feeling and heart lets us see more closely into the nature of feeling and heart. Restricting itself in accordance with its first principle to its own feeling, the consciousness of a content degrades it to the determinate form belonging to itself; it maintains itself rigidly as self-consciousness, in which this determinateness inheres; the self is for consciousness the object which it sets before itself, the substance which has the content only as an attribute, as a predicate in it, so that it is not the independent element in which the subject is sublated, or loses itself. The subject is itself in this way a fixed condition, which has been called the life of feeling. In the so-called Irony, which is connected with it, the “myself “is abstract only in relation to itself; in the distinction of itself from its content it stands as pure consciousness of itself, and as separated from it. In the life of feeling this subject exists rather in the above-mentioned identity with the content, it is definite consciousness in it, and remains as this individual “I,” object and end to itself. As the religious individual “I,” it is end to itself; this individual “I” is object and end in general; in the expression, for instance, that I am blessed, and in so far as this blessedness is brought about through belief in the truth, the “I” is filled with truth and penetrated by it. Filled in this way with yearning, it is unsatisfied in itself; but this yearning is the yearning of religion; it is, accordingly, satisfied in having this yearning in itself; in it it has the subjective consciousness of itself, and of itself as the religious self. Carried beyond itself only in this yearning, it is just in it that it preserves itself and the consciousness of being satisfied, and in close connection with this the consciousness of its contentment with itself. But this inwardness involves at the same time the opposite condition which consists in that most unhappy sense of division experienced by the pure hearted. While I regard myself strictly as this particular and abstract “I,” and compare my particular impulses, inclinations, and thoughts, with what ought to fill my nature, I am able to feel that this contrast is a painful contradiction within myself, which becomes permanent, owing to the fact that “I,” as this particular subjective “me,” have it as my aim and object to concern myself about myself as my individual self. It is just this fixed reflection which prevents me from being filled by the substantial content, by the Thing or true fact, for in the true fact I forget myself; in the very act of becoming absorbed in it that reflection upon myself disappears of itself. I am characterised as subjective only in that opposition to the Thing which remains with me through reflection on myself. In thus keeping myself outside of the Thing or true fact, and since this Thing constitutes my end, the real interest is transferred from the attentive observation of the Thing back to myself. I thus go on unceasingly emptying myself, and continue in this condition of emptiness. The hollowness which thus attaches to the highest end pursued by the individual, namely, pious effort and anxiety about the welfare of his own soul, has led to the most inhuman manifestations of a feeble and spiritless reality, ranging from the quiet anxiety of a loving disposition to the suffering caused to the soul by despair and madness. This was still more the case in former times than in these later days when the sense of satisfaction in the yearning has gained the upper hand of the sense of division, and has produced in the soul a feeling of contentment and even a sense of irony itself. Unreality in the heart, such as that referred to, is not only emptiness, but is also narrow-heartedness. It is its own formal, subjective life with which it is filled; it always has this particular “I” as its object and end. It is only the truly Universal, the Universal in-and-for-itself, which is broad, and the heart inwardly extends only by entering into this, and expanding within this substantial element, which is at once the religious, the moral, and the legal element. Speaking generally, love is the abandonment on the part of the heart of limitation to a particular point of its own, and its reception of the love of God is the reception of that development or unfolding of His Spirit which comprehends in itself all true content, and swallows up in this objectivity whatever is merely peculiar to the heart. In this substantial element the subjectivity, which is for the heart itself a one-sided form, is given up, and this at the same time supplies the impulse to throw off the subjectivity. This is the impulse to action in general, or, more strictly speaking, it is the impulse to take part in the action of the content which is divine in-and-for-itself, and is therefore the content which has absolute power and authority. It is this, accordingly, which constitutes the reality or real existence of the heart, and it is indivisibly both that inner reality and also outer reality.
When we have thus distinguished between what, because it is buried in and absorbed into the Thing or true object, is the unsophisticated heart, and the heart which in reflection is consciously occupied with itself, we find that the distinction constitutes the relation in which the heart stands to the substantial element. So long as the heart remains within itself, and consequently remains outside of this element, it is by its own act in an external and contingent relation to this element. This connection, which leads the heart to declare what is just, and to lay down the law in accordance with its own feeling, has been already mentioned. To the objectivity of action, that is, to action which originates in the truly substantial element, subjectivity opposes feeling, and to this substantial element and to the thinking knowledge of it it opposes immediate knowledge. Here, however, we do not stay to consider the nature of action, but simply remark that it is just this substantial element, represented by the laws of justice and morality and the commandments of God, which is by its very nature the true Universal, and has consequently its root and basis in the region of thought. If sometimes the laws of justice and morality are regarded merely as arbitrary commands of God — which would mean, in fact, that they were irrational — still it would take us too far to make that our starting-point. But the putting on a permanent basis and the investigation of the conviction, on the part of the conscious subject, of the truth of the principles which ought to constitute for him the basis of his action, is thinking knowledge. While the unsophisticated heart yields itself up to these principles, its insight is as yet so undeveloped, and any pretension on its part to independence is so foreign to it, that it reaches them rather by the road of authority, and thus this part of the heart in which they are implanted is alone the place of conscious thought, for they are themselves the thoughts of action, and are inherently universal principles. This heart cannot, therefore, offer any opposition to the development of what is its own objective basis, any more than it can to that of those truths which belong to it, and which at first appear in themselves rather as theoretical truths pertaining to its religious faith. As, however, this possession, and the intensity which characterises it, are already in the heart only through the mediation of education, which has asserted its influence upon its thought and knowledge just as it has upon its volition, so, in a still greater degree, the further developed content, and the alteration in the circle of its ideas which are implicitly native to the place where they are found, also represent mediating knowledge mediated into the conscious form of thought.
WE MAY SUM up what has gone before as follows. The heart ought not to have any dread of knowledge; the determinateness of feeling, the content of the heart, ought to have a substantial form. Feeling or the heart must be filled by the Thing or true object by what actually exists, and consequently be broad and true in character. But this Thing, this substantial element, is simply the truth of the Divine Spirit, the Universal in-and-for-itself, though just because of this it is not the abstract Universal, but the Universal in the development which belongs essentially to itself. The substantial element is thus essentially implicit thought, and exists in thought. But thought, what constitutes the really inner nature of faith itself, if it is to be known as essential and true — in so far as faith is no longer something implicit and merely natural, but is regarded as having entered into the sphere of knowledge with all its requirements and claims — must at the same time be known as something necessary, and must have gained a consciousness of itself and of the connected nature of its development. It thus extends and proves itself at the same time; for, speaking generally, to prove simply means to become conscious of the connection, and consequently of the necessity of things, and in relation to our present design it means the recognition of the particular content in the Universal in-and-for-itself, and of how this absolute truth itself is the result, and is consequently the final truth of all particular content. This connection, which is thus present to consciousness, must not be a subjective movement of thought outside of reality, but must follow this latter, and must simply unfold its meaning and necessity. Knowledge is just this unfolding of the objective movement of the content, of the inner necessity which essentially belongs to it, and it is true knowledge since it is in unity with the object. For us this object must be the elevation of our spirit to God, and is thus what we have referred to as the necessity of absolute truth in the form of that final result into which everything returns in the Spirit.
But because it contains the name of God, the mention of this end may easily have the effect of rendering worthless all that was urged against the false ideas of knowledge, cognition, and feeling, and all that was gained in the way of a conception of true knowledge.
It has already been remarked that the question as to whether our reason can know God, was made a formal one; that is to say, it was referred to the criticism of knowledge, of rational knowledge in general, and connected with the nature of faith and feeling in such a way that what is included under these special heads is to be understood apart altogether from any content. This is the position taken up by immediate knowledge, which itself speaks with the fruit of the tree of knowledge in its mouth, and transfers the problem to the formal sphere since it bases the justification of such knowledge, and of this exclusively, on the reflections which it makes regarding proof and philosophical knowledge, and as a consequence it has to put the true and infinite content outside of the range of its reflections, because it does not get beyond the idea of finite knowledge and cognition. With this presupposition of a knowledge and cognition which are merely finite, we contrasted the knowledge which does not remain outside of the Thing or true reality, but which, without introducing any of its own qualities, simply follows the course of true reality, and we have directed attention to the substantial element in feeling and the heart, and have shown that, speaking generally, it exists essentially for consciousness and for conscious thought, in so far as its truth has to be worked out in what constitutes its most inner nature. But owing to the mention of the name of God, this object defined as knowledge in general, as well as the study of it, have been forced into an inferior position, and connected with that subjective way of looking at things for which God is something above. Since, in what has gone before, this aspect of the matter has received sufficient elucidation, and can be here indicated merely, rather than examined in detail, the only other thing to do would be to explain the relation of God in and to knowledge as deduced from the nature of God. In connection with this it may be remarked, first of all, that our subject, namely, the elevation of the subjective spirit to God, directly implies that in this very act of elevation the one-sidedness of knowledge, that is, its subjectivity, is abolished, and that it is itself essentially this process of abolition and absorption. Consequently, the knowledge of the other side of the subject, namely, the nature of God, and, together with this, His relation in and to knowledge, comes in here of itself. But there is one drawback connected with what is of an introductory and incidental character, and is yet necessary here, and it is this, that any thorough treatment of the subject renders it superfluous. Still we may so far anticipate as to say that there can be no thought here of carrying our treatment of the subject to the point reached by the explanation so intimately connected with it, of the self-consciousness of God, and of the relation of His knowledge of Himself to the knowledge of Himself in and through the human spirit. Without referring you here to the more abstract and systematic discussions on this subject to be found in my other works, I may call attention to a very remarkable book which has recently appeared, entitled, “Aphorisms on Agnosticism and Absolute Knowledge in Relation to the Science of Christian Faith,” by C. Fr. G l (Berlin: C. Franklin). It makes reference to my statement of philosophical principles, and contains quite as much thoroughly grounded Christian belief as it does speculative and philosophical depth. It throws light on all the points of view from which the Understanding directs its attack on the Christianity of knowledge, and answers the objections and counter-arguments which the theory of agnosticism (Nichtwissen) has brought against philosophy. It shows in particular the misunderstanding and the want of understanding of which the pious consciousness is guilty when it ranges itself on the side of the explaining Understanding in connection with the principle of agnosticism, and thus makes common cause with it in its opposition to speculative philosophy. What is there advanced regarding the self-consciousness of God, His knowledge of Himself in men, and Man’s knowledge of himself in God, has direct reference to the point of view just indicated, and it is marked by speculative thoroughness while casting light on the false opinions which have been attributed alike to philosophy and to Christianity in connection with these subjects.
But even in connection with the purely general ideas to which we here confine ourselves, in order that, taking God as the starting-point, we may discuss the relation in which He stands to the human spirit, we are met more than anywhere else by an assumption which is in contradiction with any such design — namely, that we do not know God; that even in the act of believing in Him we do not know what He is, and therefore cannot start from Him. To take God as the starting-point would be to presuppose that we were able to state, and had stated, what God is in Himself as being the primary object. That assumption, however, permits us to speak merely of our relation to Him, to speak of religion and not of God Himself. It does not permit of the establishment of a theology, of a doctrine of God, though it certainly does allow of a doctrine of religion.
If there is not exactly any such doctrine, we at least hear much talk — an infinite amount of it, or rather, little talk with infinite repetitions — about religion, and therefore all the less about God Himself. This everlasting explanation of religion, of its necessity, its usefulness, and so on, together with the insignificant attempts to explain God, or the prohibition even of any attempt at explaining His nature, is a peculiar phenomenon of the culture of our time. We get off most easily when we rest contented with this standpoint, so that we have nothing before us but the barren characterisation of a relation in which our consciousness stands to God. As thus understood, religion means at least that our spirit comes into contact with this content, and our consciousness with this object, and is not merely, so to speak, a drawing out of the lines of longing into empty space, an act of perception which perceives nothing and finds nothing actually confronting it. Such a relation implies, at all events, this much, that we not only stand in a certain connection with God, but that God stands also in a certain connection with us. This zeal for religion expresses, hypothetically at least, something regarding our relation to God, if it does not express exclusively what would be the really logical outcome of the principle of the impossibility of knowing God. A one-sided relation, however, is not a relation at all. If, in fact, we are to understand by religion nothing more than a relation between ourselves and God, then God is left without any independent existence. God would, on this theory, exist in religion only, He would be something posited, something produced by us. The expression that God exists in religion only, an expression which is both frequently employed and found fault with, has, however, the true and important meaning that it belongs to the nature of God in His condition of complete and perfect independence that He should exist for the spirit of Man, and should communicate Himself to Man. The meaning here expressed is totally different from that previously referred to, according to which God is merely a postulate, a belief. God is, and gives Himself to men by coming into a relation with them. If this word is is limited to the expression of the truth that we do indeed know or recognise the fact that God is, but do not know what He is, and is thus used with a constantly recurring reflection on knowledge, then this would imply that no substantial qualities can be attributed to Him. Thus we should not have to say we know that God is, but could merely speak of is; for the word God introduces an idea, and consequently a substantial element, a content with definite characteristics, and apart from these God is an empty word. If in the language of this agnosticism (Nichtwissen) those characteristics to which we must still find it possible to refer are limited to express something negative — and for this the expression the Infinite is peculiarly appropriate, whether by it is meant the Infinite in general or those so-called attributes extended into infinity — then all that this gives us is merely indeterminate Being, abstraction, a kind of supreme or infinite Essence which is expressly our product, the product of abstraction, of thought, and does not get beyond being mere Understanding.
If, however, God is not thought of as existing in subjective knowledge merely, or in faith, but if it is seriously meant that He exists, that He exists for us, and has on His part a relation to us, and if we do not get beyond this merely formal characteristic, it is all the same implied that He communicates Himself to men, and this is to admit that God is not jealous. The Greeks of purely ancient times attributed jealousy to God when they represented Him as putting down all that was generally regarded as great and lofty, and as wishing to have and actually placing everything on a level. Plato and Aristotle were opposed to the idea of divine jealousy, and the Christian religion is still more opposed to it since it teaches that God humbled Himself even to taking on the form of a servant amongst men, that He revealed Himself to them; that, consequently, far from grudging men what is high, nay even what is highest, He, on the contrary, along with that very revelation, laid on them the command that they should know God, and at the same time indicated that this was Man’s highest duty. Without appealing to this part of the teaching of Christianity, we may take our stand on the fact that God is not jealous, and ask, Why should He not communicate Himself to Man? It is recorded that in Athens there was a law according to which any man who had a lighted candle and refused to allow another to light his at it, was to be punished with death. This kind of communication is illustrated even in connection with physical light, since it spreads and imparts itself to some other thing without itself diminishing or losing anything; and still more is it the nature of Spirit itself to remain in entire possession of what belongs to it, while giving another a share in what it possesses. We believe in God’s infinite goodness in Nature, since He gives up those natural things which He has called into existence in infinite profusion, to one another, and to Man in particular. And is He to bestow on Man what is thus merely material and which is also His, and withhold from him what is spiritual, and refuse to Man what alone can give him true value? It is as absurd to give such ideas a place in our thoughts as it is absurd to say of the Christian religion that by it God has been revealed to Man, and to maintain at the same time that what has been revealed is that He is not now revealed and has not been revealed.
On God’s part there can be no obstacle to a knowledge of Him through men. The idea that they are not able to know God must be abandoned when it is admitted that God has a relation to us, and since our spirit has a relation to Him, God exists for us, or, as it has been expressed, He communicates Himself and has revealed Himself. God reveals Himself, it is said, in Nature; but God cannot reveal Himself to Nature, to the stone, to the plant, to the animal, because God is Spirit; He can reveal Himself to Man only, who thinks and is Spirit. If there is no hindrance on God’s side to the knowledge of Him, then it is owing to human caprice, to an affectation of humility, or whatever you like to call it, that the finitude of knowledge, the human reason is put in contrast to the divine knowledge and the divine reason, and that the limits of human reason are asserted to be immovable and absolutely fixed. For what is here suggested is just that God is not jealous, but, on the contrary, has revealed and is revealing Himself; and we have here the more definite thought that it is not the so-called human reason with its limits which knows God, but the Spirit of God in Man, it is, to use the speculative expression previously employed, the self-consciousness of God which knows itself in the knowledge of Man.
This may suffice by way of calling attention to the main ideas which are floating about in the atmosphere of the culture of our time as representing the results of the “Enlightenment,” and of an understanding which calls itself reason. These are the ideas which directly meet us, to begin with, when we undertake to deal with the general subject of the knowledge of God. It was possible only to point out the fundamental moments of the worthlessness of those categories which are opposed to this knowledge, and not to justify this knowledge itself. This, as being the real knowledge of its object, must receive its justification along with the content.
Note. — The rendering of Nichtwissen in this Lecture by “Agnosticism” involves something of an anachronism, and is not technically strictly accurate; but we have no other English word which seems so well to suggest the meaning. — E.B.S.
ALL QUESTIONS AND investigations regarding the formal element in knowledge we for the present consider as settled or as put on one side. We at the same time escape the necessity of putting in a merely negative form the exposition of what is known as the metaphysical proofs of the existence of God. Criticism which leads to a negative result is not merely a sorry business, but, in confining itself to the task of showing that a certain content is vain, it is itself a vain exercise, an exertion of vanity. In defining those proofs as the grasping in thought of what we have called the elevation of the soul to God, we declared that in criticism we must directly reach an affirmative content.
And so, too, our treatment of the subject is not to be historical. Since time will not permit of me doing otherwise, I must partly refer you to histories of philosophy for the literary portion of the subject, and, indeed, the range of the historical element in these proofs may be held to be of the greatest possible extent, to be universal in fact, since every philosophy has a close connection with the primary question or with subjects which are most intimately related to it. There have, however, been times when this question was treated of in the express form of these proofs, and the interest which was felt in refuting atheism directed attention to them in a supreme degree and secured for them thorough treatment — times when the insight of thought was considered indispensable even in theology in connection with those of its parts which were capable of being known in a rational way. Besides, the historical element in anything which is a substantial content for itself, can and should have an interest for us when we are clear about the thing itself, and that thing which we have got to consider here deserves above anything else to be taken up for itself, apart from any interest which might otherwise attach to it by its being connected with material lying outside of it. To occupy ourselves too exclusively with the historical element in subjects which are in themselves eternal truths for Spirit, is a proceeding rather to be disapproved of, for it is only too frequently an illusion which deceives us as to what is of real interest. Historical study of this kind has the appearance of dealing with the Thing or actual reality; while, on the contrary, we are as a matter of fact dealing with the ideas and opinions of others, with external circumstances, with what, so far as the actual reality is concerned, is past, transitory, and vain. We may certainly meet with historically learned persons who are what is called thoroughly conversant with all the details of what has been advanced by celebrated men, Fathers of the Church, philosophers, and such like, regarding the fundamental principles of religion, but who, on the other hand, are strangers to the true object or Thing itself. If such people were to be asked what they considered to be the reality and the grounds of their conviction regarding the truth they possessed, they would very likely be astonished at such a question as something which did not concern them here, their real concern being, on the contrary, with others, with theories and opinions, and with the knowledge not of something actual but of theories and opinions.
It is the metaphysical proofs which we are considering here. I make this further remark inasmuch as it has been the custom to deduce a proof of the existence of God, ex consensu gentium, a popular category over which Cicero long ago waxed eloquent. The knowledge that all men have imagined, believed, known this, carries with it a tremendous authority. How could any man resist it and say, I alone contradict all that all men picture to themselves as true, what many of them have perceived to be the truth by means of thought, and what all feel and believe to be the truth. If, to start with, we leave out of account the force of such a proof, and look at the dry substance of it which is supposed to rest on an empirical and historical basis, it will be seen to be both uncertain and vague. All that about all nations, all men who are supposed to believe in God, is on a level with similar appeals to all generally; they are usually made in a very thoughtless fashion. A statement, which is necessarily an empirical statement, is made regarding all men, and which covers all individuals, and consequently all times and places; future ones, too, if strictly taken, for we are supposed to be dealing with all men. But it is not possible to get historical evidence regarding all nations. Such statements regarding all men are in themselves absurd, and are to be explained only by the habit people have of not treating seriously such meaningless and trite ways of speaking. But apart from this, nations, or if you choose to call them tribes, have been discovered, whose dull minds, being limited to the few objects connected with their outward needs, had not risen to a consciousness of anything higher which might be called God. What is supposed to be the historical element in the religion of many peoples rests principally on uncertain explanations of sensuous expressions, outward actions, and the like. Of a great many nations, even such as are otherwise highly civilised, and with whose religion we have a more definite and thorough acquaintance, it may be said that what they call God is of such a character that we may well hesitate to recognise it as God. A dispute of the most bitter kind has been carried on between two Roman Catholic monastic orders as to whether the names Thian and Chang-ti, which occur in the Chinese State-religion, the former meaning heaven, and the latter lord, might be used to designate the Christian God, that is to say, as to whether these names did not express ideas which are utterly opposed to our ideas of God, so opposed that they contain nothing in common with ours, not even the common abstract idea of God. The Bible makes use of the expression, “the heathen who know not God,” although these heathen were idolaters, i.e., as it is well put, although they had a religion. Here, all the same, we draw a distinction between God and an idol, and spite of the broad meaning attached in modern times to the name religion, we would perhaps shrink from giving the name God to an idol. Are we to call the Apis of the Egyptians, the monkey, the cow, &c., of the Hindus and other nations, God? Even if we were to speak of the religion of these peoples, and consequently allow that they had something more than a superstition, still we might hesitate to speak of their having belief in God. Otherwise God would be represented by the purely indeterminate idea of something higher of an entirely general character, and not even of something invisible and above sense. One may take up the position that even a bad or false religion should still be called a religion, and that it is better that the various nations should have a false religion rather than none at all, which reminds us of the story of the woman who, to the complaint that it was bad weather, replied that such weather was at least better than no weather at all. Closely connected with this position is the thought that the value of religion is to be found only in the subjective element, in the fact of having a religion, it being a matter of indifference what idea of God is contained in it. Thus belief in idols, just because such a belief can be included under the abstract idea of God in general, is regarded as sufficient, just as the abstract idea of God in general is considered satisfactory. This is certainly the reason, too, why such names as idols and heathen are regarded as something antiquated, and are considered as objectionable because of their invidious meaning. As a matter of fact, however, this abstract antithesis of truth and falsehood demands a very different solution from that given in the abstract idea of God in general, or, what comes to the same thing, in the purely subjective view of religion.
In any case the consensus gentium with regard to belief in God turns out to be a perfectly vague idea, both as regards the element of fact as such expressed in it, and also as regards the substantial element composing it. But neither is the force of this proof binding in itself, even if the historical basis had been of a firmer and more definite kind. A proof of this kind does not amount to being an individual inner conviction, since it is a matter of accident whether or not others agree with it. Conviction, whether in the form of faith or knowledge based on thought, certainly takes its start from something outside, from instruction, from what is learnt, from authority in fact; still it is essentially an inner act of self-remembrance on the part of Spirit. The fact that the individual himself is satisfied is what constitutes Man’s formal freedom, and is the one moment in presence of which authority of every kind entirely falls away; and the fact that he finds satisfaction in the Thing, in the actual reality, is what makes real freedom, and is the other factor in presence of which, in the very same manner, all authority sinks out of sight. They are truly inseparable. Even in the case of faith the one absolutely valid method of proof referred to in the Scriptures does not consist of miracles, credible accounts and the like, but of the witness of the Spirit. With regard to other subjects we may yield to authority, either from confidence or from fear; but the exercise of the right referred to is at the same time the higher duty laid upon us. In connection with the kind of conviction implied in religious belief in which the innermost nature of Spirit is directly involved, both as regards the certainty of itself (conscience) and because of its content, the individual, in consequence of this, has the absolute right to demand that his own witness and not that of outside minds should be what decides and gives confirmation.
The metaphysical method of proof which we are here considering, constitutes the witness of thinking Spirit in so far as this latter is thinking Spirit not merely potentially, but actually. The object with which it takes to do, exists essentially in thought, and even if, as was previously remarked, it is taken in the sense of something represented in feeling, still the substantial element in it belongs to thought, which is its pure self, just as feeling is the empirical self, the self which has become specialised or separate. In reference to this object an advance was made at an early period to the stage of thinking, witnessing, that is, proving, so soon, in fact, as thought emerged from its condition of absorption in sensuous and material conceptions and ideas of the sky, the sun, the stars, the sea, and so on, and disengaged itself, so to speak, from its wrapping of pictures of the imagination which were still permeated by the sensuous element — so that Man came to be conscious of God as essentially objectivity which was to be thought of, and which had been reached by thought. So, too, the subjective action of Spirit by a process of recollection brought itself back from feeling, picture-thought, and imagination, to its essence, namely, thought, and sought to have before it what belongs peculiarly to this sphere, and to have it in its pure form as it exists in this sphere. The elevation of the soul to God in feeling, intuition, imagination, and thought — and as being subjective it is so concrete that it has in it something of all these elements — is an inner experience. In regard to it we have likewise an inner experience of the fact that accidental and arbitrary elements enter into it. Consequently there arises on external grounds the necessity for analysing that elevation, and for bringing into clear consciousness the acts and characteristic qualities contained in it, in order that it may be purified from other contingent elements, and from the contingency which attaches to thought itself; and in accordance with the old belief that what is substantial and true can be reached only by reflection, we effect the purification of this act of elevation whereby it attains to substantiality and necessity, by explaining it in terms of thought, and give thought the satisfaction of realising that the absolute right possessed by it has a right to satisfaction totally different from that belonging to feeling and sense-perception or ordinary conception.
THE NECESSITY WE feel of understanding the elevation of the spirit to God from the point of view of thought, is suggested by a formal characteristic which meets us at the very first glance when we consider what direction is taken by the proof of the existence of God, and which has to be taken notice of first of all. The study of a subject from the point of view of thought is an exposition, a differentiation of what in our very first experience we arrive at by a single stroke. In connection with the belief that God is, this analysis comes into direct contact with a point which has already been incidentally touched upon, and is to be dealt with more thoroughly here, namely, the question as to the distinction to be drawn between what God is and the fact that He is. God is; what then does this mean? what is it supposed to be? God is, to begin with, a figurative idea, a name. So far as the two determinations contained in the proposition, namely, God and Being, are concerned, the most important thing is to determine or define the subject for itself, all the more that here the predicate of the proposition which would otherwise be indicated by the peculiar determination of the subject, namely, what this subject is, contains merely dry Being. But then God is for us more than mere Being. And, conversely, just because He is an infinitely richer content than mere Being, and is infinitely different from it, the important thing is to add to it this determination as representing a determination which is different from that of Being. This content which is thus distinguished from Being is an idea, a thought, a conception which is to be explained for itself, and have its meaning determined afterwards. Thus in the Metaphysic of God, or what is known as natural theology, we start by unfolding the meaning of the notion or conception of God. This is in accordance with the ordinary mode of dealing with the subject, since we consider what our previously formed idea of God contains, and in so doing further presuppose that we all have this idea which we express by the term God. The notion, accordingly, for itself, and apart altogether from the question of its reality, brings with it the demand that it should be true in itself as well, and consequently, as being the notion, that it should be logically true. Since logical truth, in so far as thought takes the form of Understanding merely, is reduced to identity, to what does not contradict itself, nothing more is demanded than that the notion should not contradict itself, or, as it is otherwise expressed, that it be possible, since possibility is itself nothing more than the identity of an idea with itself. The second thing, accordingly, is to show that this notion exists, and this is the proof of the existence of God. But because that possible notion is, in this very matter of identity, of bare possibility, reduced to this the most abstract of categories, and becomes no richer by means of existence, the product thus reached does not answer to the fulness of the idea of God, and we have accordingly a third division of the subject, in which we treat still further of the attributes of God and of His relations to the world.
These are the distinctions which meet us when we begin to examine the proofs of the existence of God. It is the work of the Understanding to analyse what is concrete, to distinguish and to define the elements belonging to it, then to hold firmly to them and abide by them. If at a later stage it once more frees them from their isolation, and recognises that it is their union which constitutes the truth, still they are from this standpoint to be regarded as being true before their union as well, and consequently when outside of this condition of unity. It is accordingly the interest of the Understanding to show that Being essentially belongs to the notion or conception of God, and that this notion must necessarily be thought of as being or existing. If this is the case, then the notion must not be thought of as separate from Being; it has no real truth apart from Being. The result thus reached is opposed to the idea that the notion should be regarded as true in itself, and as something the existence of which must be assumed, to begin with, and then established. If the Understanding here declares that this first separation made by it and what arises from the separation have no truth, then the comparison, the other separation which further arises in connection with this, is proved to be without any foundation. The notion, that is to say, is to be first considered, and then afterwards the attributes of God are to be dealt with. It is the notion or conception of God which constitutes the content of Being; it can be, and ought also to be, nothing else than the “substance of its realities.” But how then should the attributes of God be anything but realities and His realities. If the attributes of God are supposed to express rather His relations to the world, the mode of His action in and towards an Other different from Himself, then the idea of God involves this much at least, that God’s absolute independence does not permit Him to come out of Himself, and shows us what happens to be the condition of the world, which is supposed to be outside of Him and to be contrasted with Him, and which we have no right to suppose is already separate from Him. Thus His attributes, His action and mode of existence, remain shut up within His notion, find their determination in it alone, and are essentially nothing more than its relation to itself; the attributes are merely the determinations of the notion itself. But, again, if we start from the world looked at in itself as something which is external so far as God is concerned, so that the attributes of God describe His relations to it, then the world, as a product of His creative power, gets a definite character only through His notion, in which again, consequently, we find, after having followed this unnecessary and roundabout road through the world to God, that the attributes get their definite character, while the notion, if it is not to be something empty, but, on the contrary, is to be something full of content, is made explicit only through them. It results from this that the differences which we have met with are so formal that they cannot be taken as the basis of any substantial element, or of any particular spheres of existence which, if regarded apart from each other, could be considered as representing something true. The elevation of the spirit to God is found in one thing, in the determination of His notion, of His attributes, and of His Being; or God as notion or idea is the absolutely Indeterminate, and it is only when there is a transition, namely, to Being — and this is the transition in its very first and most abstract form — that the notion and the idea enter on the stage of determinateness. This determinateness, to be sure, is poor enough, but the reason of this just is that the Metaphysic referred to begins with possibility, a possibility which, although it is meant to be that of the notion of God, comes to be the mere possibility of the Understanding, which is devoid of all content, simple identity. Thus we find that in reality we are dealing merely with the final abstractions of thought in general and Being, and with their opposition as well as with their inseparableness, such as we have seen these to be. Since we have pointed out the nullity of the differences with which the metaphysical principle in question starts, we have to remember that only one result follows so far as the process involved in them is concerned, this, namely, that along with the differences we give up the process. One of the proofs which we have to consider will have for its content the very contrast of thought and Being, which we already see making its appearance here, and which will therefore be examined in its proper place in accordance with the value which it itself possesses. Here, however, we might give prominence to the affirmative element which it contains for the knowledge of the at first absolutely general and formal nature of the notion. We must pay attention to this so far as it has reference to the speculative basis and connection of our treatment of the subject in general. This is an aspect of the question which we merely indicate, whereas in itself it can indeed be nothing else but the truly leading one; but it is not our intention to follow it out in our treatment of the subject, or to confine ourselves to it alone.
It may therefore be remarked by way of preliminary, that what was previously called the notion or conception of God for itself and its possibility, is now to be called thought simply, and indeed abstract thought. A distinction was drawn between the notion of God and the possible existence of God. It was only such a notion which was in harmony with possibility, with abstract identity; and so, too, of what was intended to be taken not as the Notion in general but as a particular notion, in fact as the notion of God, nothing remained but simply this very abstract characterless identity.
It is already implied in what has been said that we cannot take any such abstract determination of the Understanding as applicable to the Notion, but rather that we must simply regard it as concrete in itself, as a unity which is not indeterminate but essentially determinate, and thus only as a unity of determinations; and this unity itself, which is thus joined on to its determinations, is therefore nothing but the unity of itself and its determinations, so that apart from the determinations the unity is nothing and disappears, or, more strictly speaking, it is even degraded to the condition of what is merely an untrue determinateness, and requires to get into relation in order to be true and real. To what has just been said, we may further add that such a unity of determinations — and it is they which constitute the content — is therefore not to be taken as a subject to which they are attached as representing several predicates which would have their bond of union only in it as in a third thing, but would be in themselves outside of this unity and mutually opposed. On the contrary, their unity is to be regarded as belonging essentially to them, that is to say, as a unity which is constituted solely by the determinations themselves, and, conversely, the separate determinations as such are to be considered as in themselves inseparable from each other, and able to pass over into each other, and as having no meaning taken by themselves apart from one another, so that as they constitute the unity this latter is their soul and substance.
It is this which constitutes the concrete element of the Notion in general. We cannot engage in philosophical speculation regarding any object whatever without employing universal and abstract categories of thought, least of all when God, the profoundest subject of thought, the absolute Notion, is the object, so that it was not possible to avoid pointing out what the speculative notion or conception of the Notion itself is. Here it will be possible to develop this notion only in the way of an historical sketch; that its content is true in-and-for-itself is shown in the logical part of philosophy. Some examples might make it plainer for ordinary thought, and not to go too far — and Spirit, certainly, is always what is nearest — it is sufficient to think of the life-force which is the unity, the simple unit of the soul, and which is at the same time so concrete in itself that it appears only in the form of the process of its viscera, of its members and organs, which are essentially different from it and from each other, and which, yet, when separated from it, perish, and cease to be what they are, namely, life, that is, they no longer have the meaning and signification which belong to them.
We have still to trace in detail the result of the notion or conception of the speculative Notion in the same fashion in which we have dealt with the conception itself. That is to say, since the characteristics of the Notion exist only in its unity, and are therefore inseparable — and in conformity with the character of our object we shall call it the Notion of God — each of these characteristics themselves, in so far as it is taken in itself, and as distinct from any other, must be regarded not as an abstract characteristic, but as a concrete notion or conception of God. But God is at the same time one only, and accordingly no other relation exists between these notions except the relation which was previously declared to exist among them as characteristics; that is to say, they are to be regarded as moments of one and the same notion, as being necessarily related to each other, as mutually mediating each other, as inseparable, so that they exist only in virtue of their relationship to each other, and this relation is the living unity which comes into existence through them, and is regarded as their hypothetical basis. It is with a view to their thus appearing in different forms that they are implicitly the same notion, only posited differently, and that, in fact, this different way in which they are posited, or different mode of appearance, is in necessary connection with the other, so that the one comes out of the other, and is posited by means of it.
The difference between the Notion in this form and the Notion as such consists, accordingly, merely in this, that the latter has in it abstract determinations representing the aspects it presents, while the Notion in its more determinate form, the Idea namely, has itself concrete aspects within itself for which those universal determinations merely supply a basis. These concrete aspects or sides are, or rather seem to be, a complete whole existing for itself. When it is conceived of as differentiated in them, within the sphere which constitutes their specific determinateness, and likewise in itself, then we get the further determination of the Notion, a multiplicity not only of determinations, but a wealth of definite forms which are accordingly purely ideal, and are posited and contained in the one Notion, in the one subject. And the unity of the subject with itself becomes the more intensive the greater the number of differences developed in it. The further continuous determination or specification which takes place is at the same time a going into itself on the part of the subject, a going down into or absorption of itself in itself.
When we say that it is one and the same Notion which is merely further determined, we are employing a formal expression. Any further and continued determination of what is one and the same adds several determinations to what is thus further defined. This richness in increased determination or specification must not, however, be thought of simply as a multiplicity of determinations, but rather as concrete. These concrete aspects regarded in themselves even take on the form of a complete self-existing whole. But when posited in one notion, in one subject, they are not independent and separate from one another in it, but rather exist ideally, and the unity of the subject accordingly becomes all the more intensive. The greatest intensity of the subject in the ideality of all concrete determinations, of the most complete antitheses, is Spirit. By way of giving a clearer conception of this, we shall refer to the relation of Nature and Spirit. Nature is contained in Spirit, is created by it, and spite of its apparently immediate Being, of its apparently independent reality, it is in itself something merely posited or dependent, something created, something having an ideal existence in Spirit. When in the course of knowledge we advance from Nature to Spirit, and Nature is defined as simply a moment of Spirit, we do not reach a true multiplicity, a substantial two, the one of which would be Nature, and the other Spirit; but, on the contrary, the Idea which is the substance of Nature, having taken on the deeper form of Spirit, retains in itself that content in this infinite intensity of ideality, and is all the richer because of the determination of this ideality itself, which is in-and-for-itself, self-conscious, or Spirit. In connection with this mention of Nature regarded in reference to the several characteristics which we have to treat of in the course of our investigation, we may mention, by way of preface, that it does indeed appear in this shape as the totality of external existence, but at the same time as one of those characteristics above which we are to raise ourselves. Here we do not go on either to consider that speculative ideality, nor to a study of the concrete shape in which the thought-determination in which it has its root, appears as Nature. The peculiar feature of the stage it occupies certainly forms one of the characteristics of God, a subordinate moment in the same notion. Since in what follows we mean to confine ourselves to its development, and to how the differences continue to be thoughts as such, moments of the Notion, the stage referred to will be regarded not as Nature but as necessity, and life as a moment in the notion or conception of God, which, however, may further be conceived of as Spirit, and possessed of the deeper quality of freedom, in order that it may be a notion or conception of God which would be worthy of Him and also of us.
What has just been said regarding the concrete form of a moment of the notion reminds us of a peculiar aspect of the matter, according to which the characteristics or determinations increase in the course of their development. The relation of the characteristics of God to one another is a difficult subject in itself, and is all the more difficult for those who are not acquainted with the nature of the Notion. But without some acquaintance at least with the notion of the Notion, or, at all events, without having some idea of it, it is not possible to understand anything about the Essence of God as representing Spirit in general. What has been said, however, will get its direct application in that part of our treatment of the subject which immediately follows.
IN THE PRECEDING lecture the speculative fundamental characteristics connected with the nature of the Notion, and its development into the manifoldness of specific qualities and definite forms, have been indicated. If we look once more at the special problem we are dealing with, we find that there, too, we are at once met by a multiplicity. We find that there are several proofs of the existence of God. There is an external empirical multiplicity or difference, which presents itself, first of all, as something which has had an historical origin, and which has nothing to do with the differences which follow from the development of the Notion, and which we take, accordingly, in the form in which we directly come upon it. We may, however, have a feeling of distrust in reference to that multiplicity if we happen to reflect that here we have not to do with a finite object, and remember that our study of an infinite object must be philosophical, and that we are not to deal with it and expend labour upon it in a haphazard and external fashion. An historical fact, nay even a mathematical figure, contains a number of references within it, and relations to what is outside of it, in accordance with which a conception is formed of it, and from which we reason syllogistically to the principal relation upon which they themselves depend, or to another specific quality which is of importance here and which is closely connected with them. It is said that some twenty proofs of the Pythagorean problem have been discovered. The more important an historical fact is, the more points of connection it presents with the circumstances of the time and with other historical events, so that in showing the necessity for accepting the fact as true we may start from any one of these points. The direct testimonies may also be very many in number, and each testimony in so far as it is not otherwise self-contradictory has in this sphere the force of a proof. If in the case of a mathematical proposition one single example is held to be sufficient, it is principally in connection with historical subjects and juridical cases that a multiplicity of proofs must be held to strengthen the force of the proof itself. In the region of experience or phenomena, the object, as being an empirical and individual thing, has the quality of contingency, and thus the particularity of the knowledge we have of it gives the object the same mere appearance of Being. It is its connection with other facts which gives the object its necessary character, and each of these again belongs in itself to this contingent sphere. Here it is the extension and repetition of such connection which gives to objectivity the kind of universality which is possible in this region. The verification of a fact or a perception by means of the mere number of the observations taken, relieves the subjectivity of perception from the reproach of being an illusion, a deception, or any one of those forms of error which it may by way of objection be declared to be.
In dealing with God since we presuppose the existence of an absolutely general idea of Him, it is found, on the one hand, that He infinitely transcends that region in which all objects whatsoever stand in a connected relation with one another; and that, on the other hand, since God exists only for the inner element of Man’s nature in general, we directly meet in this sphere with the contingency of thought, conception, and imagination, in the most varied forms and with what is expressly allowed to be contingency, namely, that of sensations, emotions, and such like. We thus get an infinite number of starting-points from which it is possible to advance to God, and from which we must necessarily advance, and hence the infinite number of such essential transitions which must have the force of proofs. So, too, the verification and confirmation of conviction by means of the repetition of the experiences gained of the way to truth, must appear to be necessary in order to counteract the infinite possibility of deception and error which, on the other hand, lurks in the way to truth. The individual’s trust and the intensity of his belief in God are strengthened by the repetition of the essential elevation of his spirit to God, and by the experience and knowledge he gains of God’s wisdom and providence as shown in countless objects, events, and occurrences. In proportion to the inexhaustible number of the relations in which things stand to the one object is the inexhaustible need felt by Man as he enters more and more deeply into the infinitely manifold finitude of his outward surroundings and his inner states, to continuously repeat his experience of God, that is, to bring before his eyes by new proofs the fact of God’s working in the world.
When we are in presence of this species of proof we at once feel that it belongs to a different sphere from that of the scientific proof. The empirical life of the individual, composed as it is of the most varied changes of mood and of conditions of feeling consequent on its entrance into different external states, takes occasion both from these states and when it is in them to multiply the result it has arrived at that there is a God, and seeks more and more anew to make this belief its own, and to make it a living belief for itself as being an individual existence subject to change. The scientific field, however, is the sphere of thought. Here the “many times” of the repetition, and the “at all times” which really represents the result, are united together in what is “once.” We have to deal with the one thought-determination, which, being one, comprises in itself all those special forms of the empirical life split up as it is into the infinite particularities of existence.
But these different spheres are different only as regards form; the matter of them is the same. Thought only brings the manifold content into a simple shape. It epitomises it without depriving it of its value or of anything that is essential to it. Its peculiar work rather is to bring this essential element into prominence. But here, too, we get various different determinations. First of all, the thought-determination is seen to be related to the starting-point from which Spirit rises from the finite up to God. Even if it reduces the innumerable characteristics to a few categories, these categories are still several in number. The finite, which has been called in a general way the starting-point, has various characteristics, and these consequently are the source of the different metaphysical proofs of the existence of God, that is to say, the proofs belonging to the sphere of thought only. In accordance with the historical form of the proofs, as we have to deal with them, the categories of the finite in which the starting-points get their definite character are, first, the contingency of earthly things, and next, the teleological relation which they have in themselves and to one another. But besides this finite beginning, finite so far as the content is concerned, there is yet another starting-point, namely, the Notion of God, which so far as its content is concerned is infinite and something that ought to be, and the only finite element in which is that it can be something subjective, an element of which it has to be divested. We may without prejudice admit a variety of starting-points. This does not in itself in any way conflict with the demand which we considered ourselves justified in making that the true proof should be one only; in so far as this proof is known by thought to represent the inner element of thought, thought can also show that it represents one and the same path, although starting from different points. Similarly the result is one and the same, namely, the Being of God. This, however, is a kind of indeterminate Universal. A difference, however, emerges here to which we must give somewhat closer attention. It is intimately connected with what we have called the beginnings or starting-points. These differ according to their starting-points, each of which has a definite content; they are definite categories; the act whereby the spirit rises from them to God is in itself the necessary course of thought, which, in accordance with an expression commonly used, is called a syllogistic argument. This has necessarily a result, and this result is defined in accordance with the definite character which attaches to the starting-point, for it follows only from this. Thus it comes about that the different proofs of the existence of God result in giving different characteristics or aspects of God. This is opposed to what is considered most probable, and to the opinion that in the proofs of the existence of God the interest centres in the fact of existence only, and that this one abstract characteristic or determination ought to represent the common result of all the different proofs. The attempt to get out of them determinations of the content is rendered unnecessary by the fact that the whole content is found ready to hand in the ordinary idea of God, and this idea thus presupposed, whether in a more definite or in a vaguer form, or in accordance with the ordinary procedure of Metaphysics above referred to, is definitely laid down beforehand, and made to represent the so-called Notion of God. The reflection that the characteristics of the content result from the transitions which take place in the course of reasoning, is not expressly made here, and least of all in connection with the proof which descends to the particular after having started from what had been previously determined, namely, the notion or conception of God, and which is expressly intended merely to satisfy the demand that the abstract characteristic of Being should be attached to that conception.
But it is self-evident that the different premises, and the variety of syllogisms which are constructed by means of these, will also yield several results differing in content. If, accordingly, the starting-points seem to permit us to take the fact of their being distinct from one another as implying a relation of equality or indifference between them, this indifference is of a limited character in view of the results which a multiplicity of characteristics of the conception of God yields; and indeed the primary question regarding their mutual relations crops up of itself in this connection, since God is one. The relation most readily thought of here is that according to which God is defined as being in His several characteristics one subject consisting of several predicates, as, for instance, when we are in the habit of speaking not only of finite objects which are described by a variety of predicates, but also when we attribute to God a variety of attributes, and speak of Him as being all-powerful, all-wise, as righteousness, goodness, and so forth. The Orientals speak of God as the many-named, or rather as the infinite-all-named, and imagine that the demand to declare what He is can be exhausted only by the inexhaustible statement of His names, that is, of His characteristics or specific qualities. We have already said of the infinite number of starting-points that they are comprised by means of thought in simple categories, and so here the necessity is still greater for reducing the multiplicity of attributes to a smaller number, or rather to one notion, all the more that God is one notion which has in it several inseparable notions; and while we allow with regard to finite objects that each in itself is certainly only one subject, an individual, that is, something indivisible, a notion or conception, we still regard this unity as being in itself manifold, made up of many things external to one another and separable, a unity which is in conflict with itself by the very fact of its existence. The finitude of living beings consists in this, that in them body and soul are separable, and, still more, that the members, nerves, muscles, and so on, the colouring matter, oil, sweat, &c., &c., are also separable; in fact, that what we regard as predicates existing in an actual subject or individual, such as colour, smell, taste, and so on, can separate from each other as independent materials, and that it belongs to the very nature of the unity that it should thus break up into parts. Spirit reveals its finitude in its variety, and in general in the want of correspondence between its Being and its notion. It becomes manifest that the intelligence does not adequately correspond to the truth, the will to the Good, the Moral, and the Right, the imagination to the understanding, and both these to the reason, and so on, and, besides, that the sense-consciousness with which the whole of existence is always kept supplied, or at any rate nearly so, consists of a quantity of momentary, transitory, and so far untrue elements. This very thorough separability and separateness of the activities, tendencies, aims, and actions of Spirit, which we meet with in empirical reality, may in some degree serve as an excuse for conceiving of the Idea of Spirit as something which breaks up into faculties, capacities, activities, and the like; for it is as an individual form of existence, a definite single being, that it is this particular finite existence which is thus found in a separate form of existence external to itself. But it is God only who is this particular One, and only as He is this One is He God; thus subjective reality is inseparable from the Idea, and consequently cannot be separated in itself. It is here that we see the variety, the separation, the multiplicity of the predicates which are knit into a unity by the subject only, but which in themselves would be in a condition of difference which would result in their coming into opposition and consequently into antagonism with each other, and which would show in the most decided way that they were something untrue, and that multiplicity of characteristics was an unsuitable category.
The next shape taken by the reduction of the several characteristics of God resulting from the several proofs, to the one notion or conception which is to be conceived of as being one in itself, is the ordinary one, according to which they are to be carried back to a higher unity, as it is called, i.e., a more abstract unity, and, since the unity of God is the highest of all, to what is consequently the most abstract form of unity. The most abstract unity, however, is unity itself, and from this it would result that the Idea of God means simply that God is unity — and to express this in terms implying a subject, or at least something which has Being — that He is the One in fact, a description, however, which implies that He is One only as against many, so that the One in Himself might still also be a predicate of the many, and therefore be unity in Himself, the One Substance rather, or, if you like, Being. But such an abstract form of determination would simply bring us back to this, that what would result from the proof of the existence of God would be simply the Being of God in an abstract sense, or, what comes to the same thing, that God Himself would simply be the abstract One (neuter) or Being, the empty Essence of the Understanding, over against which would be placed the concrete idea of God, which cannot find satisfaction in any such abstract characterisation. But not only is the ordinary idea not satisfied with this abstraction, the Notion looked at in its general aspect is by its very nature concrete itself, and what appears outwardly as difference and multiplicity of characteristics is simply the development of its moments, which all the while remains within itself. It is therefore the inner necessity of reason which shows itself active in thinking Spirit, and produces in it this multiplicity of characteristics; only, since this thought has not yet got a grasp of the nature of the Notion itself, nor consequently of the nature of its relation and the necessity of the connection, what are virtually stages in development appear to be simply an accidental multiplicity, the various elements of which follow on one another and are outside of one another, just as this thought also, moving within the circle occupied by each one of these characteristics, so conceives of the nature of the transition which is called Proof, that the characteristics, while connected with each other, still remain outside of each other, and mediate with each other merely as independent. It does not recognise that mediation with self is the true and final relation in any such process. And it will become evident that this is the formal defect in these proofs.
IF WE LOOK at the difference which exists between the proofs of the existence of God with which we are dealing, as it actually presents itself, we come upon a distinction which is of an essential kind. One set of the proofs goes from the Being to the thought of God, that is, to put it more definitely, from determinate Being to true Being as representing the Being of God; the other set proceeds from the thought of God, from truth in itself, to the Being of this truth. This distinction, although it is brought forward as one which merely happens to exist in this form, and is of a contingent character, is based on a necessary principle which requires to be taken notice of. We have before us two characteristics — the thought of God and the Being of God. We may start from the one or from the other indifferently in following out the course of reasoning which is supposed to result in their union. Where it is thus a question merely of possible choice, it appears to be a matter of indifference from which we start; and further, too, if the one leads to their being brought into connection, the other appears to be superfluous.
But what thus at first appears to be an indifferent duality and an external possibility has a connection in the Notion, so that neither are the two ways of arriving at the truth indifferent to one another, nor is the difference between them merely of an external character, nor is one of them superfluous. This necessity is not of the nature of an accessory circumstance. It is closely connected with the deepest part of our subject, and chiefly with the logical nature of the Notion. So far as the Notion is concerned, the two paths are not merely different in a general way, but are one-sided, both in reference to the subjective elevation of the spirit to God, and also in reference to the nature of God Himself. We wish to exhibit this one-sidedness in its more concrete form in reference to our subject. We have before us, to begin with, merely the abstract categories of Being and Notion, the contrast between them and their mode of relationship. It will be shown at the same time how these abstractions and their relations to one another constitute and determine the basis of what is most concrete.
That I may be able to put this thought in a more definite form, I may, by way of anticipation, refer to a further distinction, according to which there are three fundamental modes in which the connection of the two sides or characteristics appears. The first represents the passing over of the one characteristic into its Other; the second, their relativity, or the appearance of the one implicitly or actually in the Being of the Other; the third mode, again, is that of the Notion or the Idea, according to which the characteristic preserves itself in its Other in such a way that this unity, which is itself implicitly the original essence of the two, is considered as their subjective unity. Thus neither of them is one-sided, and they both together constitute the appearance of their unity, which is, to begin with, merely their substance, and thus eternally results from them as being the immanent appearance of totality, and is distinguished from them for itself as their unity, as this eternally unfolds itself in the form of their outward appearance.
The two one-sided ways of elevating the spirit to God thus indicated, accordingly directly exhibit their one-sidedness in a double form. The relations which spring from this call for mention. What has in general to be effected is that in the characteristic of the one side, namely, Being, the other characteristic, namely, the Notion, should appear, and, conversely, that in this latter the first-mentioned should be exhibited. Each determines itself to its Other, gives itself the characteristic of its Other in and out of itself. If, accordingly, only the one side were to determine itself so as to be the other, this determination would, on the one hand, be merely a passing over, in which the first would lose itself, or, on the other hand, a manifestation of itself, outside of itself, in which each would certainly preserve its independent existence, but would not return into itself, would not be that unity for itself. If we give to the Notion the concrete signification of God, and to Being the concrete signification of Nature, and conceived of the self-determination of God in the form of Nature, as found only in the first of the connections indicated, this would be the process whereby God becomes Nature. But if, according to the second of the connections, Nature is to be taken merely as a manifestation of God, then she, as something in course of transition, would represent the unity inherent in this only for a third thing, only for us, and this would not be unity which is actually present in-and-for-itself, the true unity, determined beforehand. When we put this thought in more concrete forms, and conceive of God as the Idea existing for itself from which we start, and think of Being as also the totality of Being, as Nature, then the advance from the Idea to Nature takes (1) the form simply of a passing over into Nature, in which the Idea is lost and disappears. (2) In order to bring out more clearly the meaning of this transition, we may say that this would be merely an act of remembrance on our part that the simple result had issued from an Other which had, however, disappeared. So far, again, as the outward form is concerned, it would be simply we who had brought the semblance or appearance into relation with its Essence and referred it back to this. Or, looking at the question from a broader standpoint, we may say that God had merely created Nature, not a finite spirit which returns from Nature back to Him; that He had an unfruitful love of the world as of something which was the mere semblance or show of Himself, and which as such remained an Other in relation to Him which did not reflect Him, and through which He did not shine as through Himself. And what is the third thing supposed to be; what are we supposed to be who have brought this show or semblance into relation with its Essence, and referred it back to its central point, and have been the means whereby the Essence first manifested itself and appeared in itself? What would this third thing be? What would we be? We would represent a knowledge whose existence was presupposed in an absolute way, in fact an independent act of a formal universality which embraced everything in itself, and in which that necessarily existing unity which is in-and-for-itself would itself be included as a mere phenomenon or semblance without objectivity.
If we form a more definite conception of the relation which is set forth in this determination, then it will be seen that the elevation to God of determinate Being, of Nature, and of natural Being in general, and, along with this, of our consciousness, the active form of this elevation itself, is simply religion or piety which rises to God in a subjective way only, either simply in the shape of an act of transition whereby we disappear in God, or by setting ourselves over against Him as a semblance or illusion. If the finite were thus to disappear in Him, He would be merely the absolute substance, from which nothing proceeds, and into which nothing returns to itself, and even to form ideas of or to think of the absolute substance would be already too much, something which would itself have to disappear. If, however, the relation of reflection is still preserved, the elevation of the pious mind to God, in the sense that religion as such, and consequently the subjective for itself, continues to represent what has Being and is independent, then what is primarily independent or self-existent, and the elevation to which constitutes religion, is something produced by religion, something conceived of, postulated, thought or believed, an appearance or semblance merely, not anything truly independent which starts from itself. It is substance as an idea merely, which does not decide for itself, and which consequently is not the activity which as activity is found only in the subjective elevation as such. It would not in this case be known and recognised as true that God is the Spirit who Himself arouses in men that desire to rise to Him, that religious feeling in which the elevation begins.
If from this one-sidedness there results a broader idea and a further development of what does not, to begin with, get beyond something which has the character of a reflex semblance, and if we thus reach its emancipation, in which it, as being independent and active, would in its turn be defined as not-semblance, then we would attribute to this independent existence merely a relative, and consequently a half connection with its other side, which contained in it itself a non-communicating and incommunicable kernel which had nothing to do with the Other. We would be dealing merely with the superficial form, in which the two sides were apparently related to each other, and which would not imply a relation springing from their essence and established by their essence. Both sides consequently would be wanting in the true, total return of Spirit into itself, and Spirit would thus not search into the deep things of the Godhead. But this return into itself and this searching into the Other are essentially coincident; for mere immediacy, substantial Being, does not imply anything deep. It is the real return into self which alone makes the depths of God, and it is just the act of searching into the Essence which is return into self.
We may stop here with this preliminary reference to the more concrete sense of the difference indicated, and which we discovered by means of reflection. What had to be called attention to was that the difference is not a superfluous multiplicity; further, that the division springing from it, and which was, to begin with, of a formal and external character, contains two characteristics — Nature, natural things, and the progress of consciousness to God and from Him back to Being, both of which equally and necessarily belong to one conception, and this quite as much in the course of the subjective procedure of knowledge as when they have an absolutely objective concrete sense, and, regarded each for itself, present a one-sidedness of a most important kind. So far as knowledge is concerned, their integration is found in the totality which the Notion in general represents, and, more strictly speaking, in what was said about it, namely, that its unity as a unity of the two moments is a result representing the most absolute basis and result of the two moments. Without, however, presupposing this totality and its necessity, it will follow from the result of the one movement — and since we are beginning we can begin only in a one-sided way from the one — that by its own dialectic nature it forces itself to go over into the other, and passes from itself over into this complete integration. The objective signification of what is, to begin with, a merely subjective conclusion will, however, at once make it evident that the inadequate, finite form of that proof is done away with. Its finitude consists, above all, in this one-sidedness which attaches to its indifference and its separation from the content. When this one-sidedness has been done away with and absorbed, it comes to have the content also in itself in its true form. The process of elevation to God is in itself the abolition of the one-sidedness of subjectivity in general, and, above all, of knowledge.
To the distinction which, regarded from the formal side, appears as a difference in the kinds of the proofs of the existence of God, there has yet to be added the fact that if we look at the proof from the one side according to which we pass from the Being of God to the conception of God, it presents itself under two forms.
The first proof starts from the Being which as something contingent does not support itself, and from this reasons to a true necessary Being in-and-for-itself — this is the proof ex contingentia mundi.
The other proof starts from Being in so far as it has a definite character determined in accordance with relations implying an end, and reasons to a wise author of this Being — this is the Teleological Proof of the existence of God.
We have still to deal with the other side, according to which the notion or conception of God is made the starting-point, and from which we reason to its Being — the Ontological Proof. As this is the plan we mean to follow out, there are thus three proofs which we have to consider; and also, as being of no less importance, we have to consider the criticism which has been given of them, and owing to which they have been discarded and forgotten.
THE PROOFS WE have to deal with, regarded in their first aspect, presuppose the world in general, and, above all, its contingency. The starting-point is constituted by empirical things, and by the Whole composed of these things, namely, the world. The Whole is certainly superior to its parts, the Whole, that is to say defined as the unity which embraces and gives their character to all the parts, as, for instance, even when we speak of the Whole of a house, and still more in the case of that Whole which is a self-existent unity, as the soul is in reference to the living body. By the term world, however, we understand the aggregate of material things, the collection merely of that infinite number of existing things which are actually visible, and each of which is, to begin with, conceived of as existing for itself. The world embraces men equally with natural things. When the world is thus taken as an aggregate, and even as an aggregate merely of natural things, it is not conceived of as Nature, by which we understand something which is in itself a systematic Whole, a system of arrangements and gradations, and particularly of laws. The term world as thus understood expresses the aggregate merely, and suggests that it is based simply on the existing mass of things, and has thus no superiority, no qualitative superiority at least, over material things.
So far as we are concerned, these things further determine themselves in a variety of ways, and chiefly as limited Being, finitude, contingency, and so on. This is the kind of starting-point from which the spirit raises itself to God. It adjudges limited, finite or contingent Being to be untrue Being, above and beyond which true Being exists. It escapes into the region of another, unlimited Being, which represents the Essence as opposed to that unessential, external Being. The world of finitude, of things temporal, of change, of transitoriness, is not the true form of existence, but the Infinite, Eternal, and Unchangeable. And even if what we have called limitless Being, the Infinite, Eternal, and Unchangeable, does not succeed in expressing the absolute fulness of meaning contained in the word God, still God is limitless Being, He is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, and thus the spirit rises at least to those divine predicates or to those fundamental qualities of His nature which, though abstract, are yet universal, or at least to that universal region, to the pure æther in which God dwells.
This elevation of the soul to God is, speaking generally, that fact in the history of the human spirit which we call religion, but religion in a general sense, that is, in a purely abstract sense, and thus this elevation is the general, but merely the general, basis of religion.
The principle of immediate knowledge does not get beyond this elevation as a fact. It appeals to it, and rests in it as a fact, and asserts that it represents that universal fact in men, and even in all men, which is called the inner revelation of God in the human spirit, or reason. We have already sufficiently examined this principle, and I accordingly refer to it once more only in so far as we here confine our attention to the fact in question. This very fact, the act of elevation to God namely, is as such rather something which is directly of the nature of mediation. It has its beginning and starting-point in finite, contingent existence, in material things, and represents an advance from these to something else. It is consequently mediated by that beginning, and is an elevation to what is infinite and in itself necessary, only inasmuch as it does not stop short at that beginning which is here alone the Immediate (and this an Immediate which afterwards exhibits a merely relative character), but rises to the Infinite by the mediate step of the abandonment and renunciation of such a standpoint. This elevation which is represented by consciousness, is consequently in itself mediated knowledge.
With regard to the point from which this elevation starts, we may here further remark that the content is not of a sensuous kind, not an empirical concrete content composed of sensation or perception, nor a concrete content of imagination — the truth rather being that the abstract thought-determinations implied in the ideas of the finitude and contingency of the world form the starting-point. The goal at which the elevation arrives is of a similar kind, namely, the infinitude or absolute necessity of God, conceived of not as having a more developed and richer determination, but as being wholly within the limits of these general categories. With regard to this aspect of the question it is necessary to point out that the universality of the fact of this elevation is false so far as its form is concerned. For instance, it can be maintained that even amongst the Greeks the thought of infinity, of inherently existing necessity as representing the ultimate principle of all things, was the possession of the philosophers only. Material things did not appear in this general way to the popular conception in the abstract form of material things and as contingent and finite things, but rather in their empirical and concrete shape. So in the same way God was not conceived of under the category of the Infinite, the Eternal, the inherently Necessary, but, on the contrary, in accordance with the definite shapes created by the imagination. Still less is it the case that those nations who occupied a lower stage of culture put their conceptions in any such actually universal forms. These general forms of thought do certainly pass through men’s minds, as we say, because men are thinking beings, and when they have received a fixed form in language they are still further developed into the conscious thought upon which the proof proper is based, but even in that case they take, to begin with, the form of characteristics of concrete objects; they don’t require to get a fixed place in consciousness as independent in their own right. It was to the culture of our time that these categories of thought first became familiar, and they are now universal, or at least universally diffused. But those very people who have shared in this culture, and no less those who have been referred to as unpractised in the independent exercise of thought based on general conceptions, have not reached this idea in any immediate way, but, on the contrary, by following the varied course of thought, and by the study of the sense in which words are used. People have essentially learned to think, and have given currency to their thoughts. The culture which is capable of abstract conception is something which has been reached through mediation of an infinitely manifold character. The one fact in this fact of the elevation of Man to God is that it is a mediation.
It is this circumstance, namely, that the elevation of the spirit to God has mediation in itself, which invites to proof, that is, to the explication of the separate moments of this process of the spirit, and to their explication in the form of thought. It is the spirit in its most inward character, that is, in its thought, which produces this elevation, which in its turn represents the course followed by the thought-determinations or characteristic qualities of thought. What is intended to be effected by this process of proof is that this activity of thought should be brought into consciousness, that consciousness should recognise it as representing those moments of thought in a connected form. Against this unfolding of these moments which shows itself in the region of mediation through thought, faith, which wishes to continue to be immediate certainty, protests, and so, too, does the criticism of the Understanding, which is at home in the intricacies of that mediation, and is at home in the latter in order that it may introduce confusion into the elevation itself. So far as faith is concerned, we may say that however many faults Understanding may find with these proofs, and whatever defective points there may be in their manner of unfolding the moments of the elevation of the spirit from the accidental and temporal to the infinite and eternal, the human heart will not allow itself to be deprived of this elevation. In so far as the human heart has been checked in this matter of elevation to God by the Understanding, faith has, on the one hand, appealed to it to hold fast by this elevation, and not to trouble itself with the fault-finding of the Understanding; but it has, on the other hand, told itself not to trouble about proof at all, in order that it may reach what is the surest standing ground, and in the interest of its own simplicity it has ranged itself on the side of the critical Understanding in direct opposition to proof. Faith will not allow itself to be robbed of its right of rising to God, that is, of its witness to the truth, because this is inherently necessary, and is more than any single chance fact connected with Spirit. There are facts, inner experiences in Spirit, and still more are there in the individual spirits — for Spirit does not exist as an abstraction, but in the form of many spirits — facts of an infinitely varied sort, and sometimes of the most opposite and depraved character. In order that this fact may be rightly conceived of as a fact of Spirit as such, and not merely as a fact belonging to the various ephemeral contingent spirits, it is requisite to conceive of it in its necessary character. It is this necessary character which alone vouches for its truth in this contingent and arbitrary sphere. The sphere to which this higher fact belongs is, further, essentially the sphere of abstraction. Not only is it very difficult to have a clear and definite consciousness of what abstraction is and what is the nature of its inner connection, but this power of abstraction is itself the real danger, and this is a danger which is unavoidable when abstraction has once appeared, when the believing human spirit has once tasted of the Tree of Knowledge, and thought has begun to spring up within it in the free and independent form which peculiarly belongs to it.
If, accordingly, we look more narrowly at the inner course followed by Spirit in thought and its moments, it will be seen, as has been already observed, that the first starting-point represents a category of thought, namely, that of the contingency of natural things. The first form of the elevation of the spirit to God is represented historically by the so-called Cosmological Proof of the existence of God. It has also been pointed out that on the definiteness of the starting-point depends also the definiteness of the goal which we wish to reach. Natural things might be defined in another way, and in that case the result or the truth would also be differently defined. We might have differences which would appear unimportant to very imperfectly developed thought, but which from that standpoint of thought which we at present occupy would be seen to be the very thing with which we were really concerned and which has to be reckoned with. If things were thus defined in a general way as existing, it might be shown that the truth of existence as determinate Being, was Being itself, indeterminate, limitless Being. God would thus be defined as Being — the most abstract of all definitions, and the one with which, as is well known, the Eleatics started. We recall this abstraction most vividly in connection with the distinction already made between thought in its inner and implicit form and the bringing forward of thoughts into consciousness. Who is there who does not use the word Being? (The weather is fine. Where are you? and so on, ad infinitum.) And who, in forming conceptions, does not make use of this pure category of thought, though it is concealed in the concrete content (the weather, and so on, ad infinitum), of which consciousness in forming any such conceptions is composed, and of which alone, therefore, it has any knowledge? There is an infinite difference between the possession and employment of the category of thought called Being in this way, and its employment by the Eleatics, who gave it a fixed meaning in itself, and conceived of it as the ultimate principle, as the Absolute, along with God at least, or apart from any God at all. Further, when things are defined as finite, Spirit has risen from them to what is infinite; and when they are defined at the same time as real Being, then Spirit has risen to the Infinite as representing what is ideal or ideal Being. Or if they are expressly defined as having Being in a merely immediate way, then Spirit rises from this pure immediacy, which is a mere semblance of Being, to the Essence, and regards this as representing the ground or basis of Being. It may again rise from them as representing parts, to God as representing the Whole; or from them as external and selfless things, to God as representing the force behind them; or from them as effects, to their cause. All these characteristics are applied to things by thought, and in the same way the categories of Being, the Infinite, the Ideal, Essence and Ground, the Whole, Force, Cause, are used to describe God. It is implied that they may be employed to describe Him, yet still as suggesting that though they may be validly applied to Him, and though God is really Being, the Infinite, Essence, the Whole, Force, and so on, they do not, all the same, exhaust His nature, which is deeper and richer than anything such determinations can express. The advance from any such determination of existence taken as a starting-point and as representing the finite in general, to its final determination, that is, to the Infinite in thought, deserves the name Proof exactly in the same way as those proofs to which the name has been formally given. In this way the number of proofs goes far beyond that of those already mentioned. From what standpoint are we to regard this further increase in the number of the proofs which have thus grown up in what is perhaps for us an unpleasant way? We cannot exactly reject this multiplicity of arguments. On the contrary, when we have once placed ourselves at the standpoint of those mediations of thought which are recognised as proofs, we find we have to explain why in thus adducing them we have confined, and can confine, ourselves just to the number mentioned, and to the categories contained in them. In reference to this new and further extended variety of proofs, we have to think principally of what was said in connection with those which appeared at an earlier stage and in a more limited shape. This multiplicity of starting-points which thus presents itself is nothing else than that large number of categories which naturally belong to the logical treatment of the subject. We have merely to indicate the manner in which they point to this latter. They show themselves to be nothing but the series of the continuous determinations which belong to the Notion, and not to any one notion, but to the Notion in itself. They represent the development of the Notion till it reaches externalisation, the condition in which its elements are mutually exclusive, though it has really gone deeper into itself. The one side of this continuous advance is represented by the finite definiteness of a form of the Notion; the other, by its most obvious truth, which is in its turn simply the truth in a more concrete and deeper form than that which preceded it. The highest stage in one sphere is at the same time the beginning of a higher stage. It is logic which unfolds in its necessity this advance in the determination of the Notion. Each stage through which it passes so far involves the elevation of a category of finitude into its infinitude, and it thus likewise involves from its starting-point onwards a metaphysical conception of God, and, since this elevation is conceived of in its necessity, a proof of His Being. Thus also the transition from the one stage to the higher stage presents itself as a necessary advance in more concrete and deeper determination, and not only as a series of random conceptions, and so as an advance to perfectly concrete truth, to the full and perfect manifestation of the Notion, to the equating or identification of these its manifestations with itself. Logic is, so far, metaphysical theology, which treats of the evolution of the Idea of God in the æther of pure thought, and thus concerns itself peculiarly with this Idea, which is perfectly independent in-and-for-itself.
Such detailed treatment is not the object of these lectures. We wish to confine ourselves here to the historical discussion of those characteristics of the Notion the rising from which to the characteristics of the Notion which are its truth, and which may be held to be the characteristics of the Notion of God, is the point to be considered. The reason of the general incompleteness which marks that method of taking up the characteristics of the Notion can only be found in the defective ideas prevalent with regard to the nature of the characteristics of the Notion itself, and of their mutual connection, as well as of the nature of the act of rising from them as finite to the Infinite. The more immediate reason why the characteristic of the contingency of the world and that of the absolutely necessary Essence which corresponds to it appear as the starting-point and as the result of the proof respectively — and this reason is at the same time a relative justification of the preference given to them — is to be looked for in the fact that the category of the relation between contingency and necessity is that in which all the relations of the finitude and the infinitude of Being are resumed and comprised. The most concrete determination of the finitude of Being is contingency, and in the same way the infinitude of Being in its most completely determined form is necessity. Being in its own essentiality is reality, and reality is in itself the general relation between contingency and necessity which finds its complete determination in absolute necessity. Finitude, by being taken up into this thought-determination, has the advantage, so to speak, of being so far prepared by this means as to point in itself to the transition to its truth or necessity. The term contingency, or accident, already suggests a kind of existence whose special character it is to pass away.
Necessity itself, however, has its truth in freedom; with it we enter into a new sphere, into the region of the Notion itself. This latter accordingly affords another relation for the determination of elevation to God and for the course it follows, a different determination both of the starting-point and the result, and, first of all, the determination of what is conformable to an end, and that of the End. This accordingly becomes the category for a further proof of the existence of God. But the Notion is not something merely submerged in objectivity, as it is when regarded as an end, in which case it is merely the determination of things; but, on the contrary, it is for itself, and exists independently of objectivity. Regarded in this light, it is itself the starting-point, and its transition has a determination of its own, which has been already referred to. The fact, therefore, that the first Proof, the Cosmological Proof, adopts the category of the relation of contingency and absolute necessity, finds, as has been remarked, its relative justification in this, that this relation is the most individual, most concrete, and, in fact, the ultimate characteristic of reality as such, and accordingly represents and comprises in itself the truth of the more abstract categories of Being taken collectively. The movement of this relation likewise includes the movement of the earlier, more abstract characteristics of finitude to the still more abstract characteristics of infinitude; or rather, it is, in a logically abstract sense, the movement, or procedure of the proof, that is, it is the form of syllogistic reasoning, in all cases only one and the same, which is represented in it.
As is well known, the effect of the criticism directed by Kant against the metaphysical proofs of the existence of God has been that these arguments have been abandoned, and that they are no longer mentioned in any scientific treatise on the subject; in fact, one is almost ashamed to adduce them at all. It is allowed, however, that they may be used in a popular way, and these helps to truth are universally employed in connection with the instruction of youth, and the edification of those who are grown up. So, too, that eloquence which has for its principal aim to warm the heart and elevate the feelings necessarily takes and uses them as the inner fundamental and connecting principles of the ideas with which it deals. With regard to the so-called Cosmological Proof, Kant (“Critique of Pure Reason,” 2nd edition, ) makes the general remark that if we presuppose the existence of anything, we cannot avoid what follows from this, namely, that something or other exists in a necessary way, and that this is an absolutely natural conclusion; and he goes on further to remark, at , with regard to the Physico-theological Proof, that “it ought always to be mentioned with respect, since it is the oldest, the clearest, and the one most in harmony with ordinary human reason.” He declares that “it would not only be a comfortless task, but an absolutely useless one, to attempt to detract in any way from the authority of this proof.” He holds, further, that “reason can never be so far repressed by any doubts suggested by subtle abstract speculation as to be unable to extricate herself from any such burrowing indecision as from a dream, by the mere glance which she directs to the wonders of Nature and the majesty of the universe, in order thus to go from one form of greatness to another until the highest of all is reached, and to rise from the conditioned to the condition, until she arrives at the supreme and unconditioned Author of all.”
If, then, the proof first adduced expresses an unavoidable conclusion from which it is impossible to escape, and if it would be absolutely useless to seek to detract from the authority of the second proof, and if reason can never be so far repressed as to renounce this method of proof and not to rise through it to the unconditioned Author of all, it must certainly appear strange that we should evade the demand referred to, and if all the while reason be held to be so entirely repressed that it no longer attaches any weight to this proof. But just as it may appear to be a sin against the good society of the philosophers of our time to continue to mention those proofs, it equally appears that the philosophy of Kant, and Kant’s refutations of those proofs, are something which we have long ago done with, and which is therefore not to be mentioned any more.
The fact, however, is that it is Kant’s criticism alone which has done away with these proofs in a scientific way, and which has itself become the source of the other and shorter method of rejecting them, that method, namely, which makes feeling alone the judge of truth, and asserts not only that thought is superfluous, but that it is damnable. In so far, then, as we are concerned in getting to know the scientific reasons for which these proofs have lost their authority, it is Kant’s criticism alone with which we are called to deal. It is, however, to be noticed, further, that the ordinary proofs which Kant subjects to criticism, and in particular the Cosmological and Physico-theological Proofs, whose method we are here considering, contain characteristics of a more concrete kind than the abstract merely qualitative characteristics of finitude and infinitude. Thus the Cosmological Proof contains the characteristics of contingent existence and of absolutely necessary Essence. It has also been observed that even when the antitheses are expressed by the terms conditioned and unconditioned, or by accident and substance, they still necessarily have here this merely qualitative meaning. Here, accordingly, the really essential point to be dealt with is the formal procedure of the mediation connected with the proof; and, besides, the content and the dialectic nature of the characteristics themselves are not dealt with in the metaphysical syllogisms referred to, nor in Kant’s criticism either. It is, however, just the mediation of this very dialectic element which it is necessary to carry through and pass judgment upon. For the rest, the particular mode in which the mediation in those metaphysical lines of argument, as well as that belonging to Kant’s estimate of them, is to be conceived of, is, as a whole, the same; and this is true of all the separate proofs of the existence of God, that is, of all those belonging to the class which starts from some given form of existence. And if we here look more closely at the nature of this syllogism of the Understanding, we shall have also settled its character so far as the other proofs are concerned, and in dealing with them we shall have to direct our attention merely to the content of the characteristics in its more definite form.
The consideration of Kant’s criticism of the Cosmological Proof comes to be all the more interesting from the fact that, according to Kant, this proof has concealed in it “a whole nest of dialectic assumptions, which, nevertheless, transcendental criticism is able to lay bare and destroy.” I shall first restate this proof in the form in which it is usually expressed, which is the one employed by Kant, and which runs thus: If anything exists — not merely exists, but exists a contingentia mundi, is defined as contingent — then some absolutely necessary Essence must exist as well. Now I myself at least exist, and therefore an absolutely rational Essence exists. Kant remarks, first of all, that the minor term contains something derived from experience, and that the major term concludes from experience in general that something necessary exists; that consequently the proof is not carried through in an absolutely a priori way, a remark which connects itself with what was mentioned before as to the general nature of this style of argument, which takes up merely one aspect of the total true mediation.
The next remark has reference to a point of supreme importance in connection with this style of argument, and which Kant expresses in the following form. The necessary Essence can be characterised as necessary only in one single mode, that is, in respect of all possible opposing predicates only by means of one of these, and consequently there can be only one single conception of any such thing, namely, that of the most real Essence — a conception which confessedly forms the subject of the Ontological Proof, to be dealt with much later on.
It is against this latter more comprehensive characteristic of necessary Essence that Kant first of all directs his criticism, and which he describes as a mere refinement of reasoning. The empirical ground of proof above mentioned cannot tell us what are the attributes of this necessary Essence. To reach these, reason has absolutely to part company with experience, and to seek in pure conceptions what kind of attributes or qualities an absolutely necessary Essence must possess, and what thing amongst all possible things has the requisite qualifications which should belong to an absolute necessity. We might attribute to the age the many marks of want of intellectual training which characterise these expressions, and be willing to admit that anything like this is not to be found in the scientific and philosophical modes of statement current in our day. At all events, God would not in these days be any longer qualified as a thing, nor would we try to seek amongst all possible things some one thing which should suit the conception of God. We speak indeed of the qualities or attributes of this or that man, or of Peruvian bark, and such like; but in philosophical statements we do not speak of attributes in reference to God as a thing. Only we all the more frequently hear conceptions spoken of simply as abstract specific forms of thought, so that it is no longer necessary to indicate what we mean when we ask information regarding the notion or conception of anything, or when, in fact, we wish to form a conception of any object. It has, however, quite become a generally accepted principle, or rather it has come to form part of the belief of this age, that reason should be reproached with putting its investigations in the form of pure conceptions, and even that this should be reckoned a crime; in other words, it is blamed for showing itself active in a way different from that of sense-perception, or from that followed by imagination and poetry. In the case of Kant we see, at any rate, in his treatment of the subject, the definite presuppositions from which he starts, and the logical result of the reasoning process he follows, so that any opinion arrived at is expressly reached and proved by means of principles, and it is held that any view must be deduced from principles, and be, in fact, of a philosophical kind. In our day, on the contrary, if we go along the highway of knowledge, we meet with the oracular utterances of feeling, and the assertions of the individual person who has the pretension to speak in the name of all men, and as a consequence of this pretends that he has also a right to impose his assertions upon everybody. There cannot possibly be any kind of precision in the characteristics which spring from such sources of knowledge, nor in the form in which they are expressed, nor can they lay claim to be logical or to be based on principles or grounds.
That part of Kant’s criticism referred to suggests the definite thought, first of all, that the proof we are dealing with leads us merely to the idea of a necessary Essence, but that any such characteristic is different from the conception of God, that is, from the characteristic of the most real Essence, and that this latter must be deduced by reason from the former by means of conceptions pure and simple. It will at once be seen that if this proof does not bring us any further than to the idea of an absolutely necessary Essence, the only objection which could be urged against it would be, that the idea of God which is limited to what is implied in this characteristic is at any rate not such a profound idea as we, whose conception of God is more comprehensive, wish for. It is quite possible that individuals and nations belonging to an earlier age, or who, while belonging to our age, are living outside the pale of Christianity and of our civilisation, might have no more profound idea of God than this. For all such, this proof would consequently be sufficient enough. We may, in any case, allow that God and God only is the absolutely necessary Essence, even if this characteristic does not exhaust the Christian idea, which, as a matter of fact, includes in it something more profound than the metaphysical characteristic of so-called natural theology — something more profound, too, than what is found in the conception of God which belongs to immediate knowledge and faith. It is itself questionable if immediate knowledge can even say this much of God, that He is the absolutely necessary Essence; at any rate, if one person can know this much of God immediately, another may equally well not know so much of Him immediately in the absence of any right on the part of any one to expect more of him, for a right implies reasons and proofs, that is, mediations of knowledge, and mediations are excluded from and forbidden to immediate knowledge of this kind.
But if the development of what is contained in the characteristic of absolutely necessary Essence gives us still further characteristics as duly following from it, what objection can there be to accepting these, and to being convinced of their validity? The ground of proof may be empirical; but if the proof is in itself a properly deduced consequence, and if the existence of a necessary Essence is once for all established by this consequence, reason starting from this basis pursues its investigations by the aid of what are purely conceptions; but this can be reckoned an unjustifiable act only when the employment of reason in general is considered wrong, and, as a matter of fact, Kant carries the degradation of reason as far as those do who limit all truth to immediate knowledge.
However, the characteristic of the so-called most real Essence is easily deducible from the characteristic of the absolutely necessary Essence, or even from the characteristic of the Infinite, beyond which we have not gone, for all and every limitation contains a reference to an Other, and is consequently opposed to the characteristic of the Absolutely-necessary and Infinite.
The real illusion or fallacy in the mode of inference which is supposed to belong to this proof, is sought for by Kant in the proposition that every purely necessary Essence is at the same time the most real Essence, and he holds that this proposition is the nervus probandi of the Cosmological Proof. He seeks, however, to expose the fallacy by pointing out that, since a most real Essence is not one whit different from any other Essence, the proposition permits of being simply inverted, that is, any — and by this is meant the most real — Essence is absolutely necessary, or, in other words, the most real Essence which as such gets its determinate nature by means of the Notion, must also contain within it the characteristic of absolute necessity. This, however, is just the principle and method of the Ontological Proof of the existence of God, which consists in this, that it starts from the notion or conception, and passes by means of the conception to existence. The Cosmological Proof uses the Ontological as a prop, since it promises to conduct us by a new footpath, and yet after a short detour brings us back to the old one, the existence of which it refused to admit, and which we abandoned for its sake.
It will be seen that the objection does not touch the Cosmological Proof, either in so far as this latter merely attains by itself to the characteristic of something absolutely necessary, or in so far as it advances from this by way of development to the further characteristic of what is most real. So far as this connection between the two characteristics in question is concerned, it being the point against which Kant particularly directs his objections, we can see that it is quite in accordance with the nature of proof that the transition from one already established characteristic to a second, or from a proposition already proved to another, should permit of being clearly exhibited; but we can see, too, that reasoned knowledge cannot go back in the same way from the second to the first, and cannot deduce the second from the first. Euclid first demonstrated the proposition of the known relation between the sides of a right-angled triangle by starting from this definite quality of the triangle, and deducing the relationship of the sides from it. Then the converse proposition was also demonstrated, and in this case he started from the fact of this relation, and deduced from it the right-angled character of the triangle, the sides of which had that relation to one another, and yet this was done in such a way that the demonstration of this second proposition presupposed and made use of the first. In another instance this demonstration of the converse proposition is given apagogically by presupposing the first. Thus the proposition, that if in a rectilineal figure the sum of the angles is equal to two right angles, the figure is a triangle, can be easily proved to follow apagogically from the proposition previously demonstrated that in a triangle the three angles together make two right angles. When it is shown that a predicate belongs to an object, we must go further if we are to show that such a predicate belongs to it exclusively, and that it is not merely one of the characteristics of the object which may belong to others as well, but that it is involved in the definition of the object. This proof might be stated in various ways, and is not compelled exactly to follow one single path, namely, that which starts from the conception of the second characteristic. Besides, in dealing with the connection between the so-called most real Essence and the absolutely necessary Essence, it is only one aspect of this latter that we have to take directly into account, and we have nothing at all to do with that aspect in reference to which Kant brings forward the difficulty discovered by him in the Ontological Proof. The characteristic of absolutely necessary Essence involves the necessity partly of its Being, partly of the characteristics of its content. If it be asked what is implied in the further predicate, the all-embracing, unlimited reality, the reply is that this question has no reference to Being as such, but to what is to be further distinguished as the characteristic of the content. In the Cosmological Proof, Being has already a definite existence of its own, and the question as to how we pass from absolute necessity to the All-Reality, and back from the latter to the former, has reference to this content only, and not to Being. Kant finds the defect of the Ontological Proof in the fact that in connection with its fundamental characteristic, the All of realities, Being is likewise conceived of as a reality. In the Cosmological Proof, however, we have already this Being elsewhere. Inasmuch as it adds the characteristic of All-Reality to what is for it absolutely necessary, it does not at all require that Being should be characterised as reality, and that it should be comprised in that All-Reality.
Kant in his criticism begins by taking the advance of the characteristic of the Absolutely-necessary to unlimited reality only in this sense, since, as was previously indicated, for him the point of this advance is the discovery of the attributes possessed by the absolutely necessary Essence, as the Cosmological Proof in itself has made only one step in advance, namely, to the existence of an absolutely necessary Essence in general, but cannot tell us what kind of attributes this Essence possesses. We must therefore hold that Kant is in error in asserting that the Cosmological Proof rests on the Ontological, and we must regard it as a mistake even to maintain that it requires this latter to complete it, that is, in regard to what it has in general to accomplish. That more, however, has to be accomplished than it accomplishes, is a matter for further consideration, and this further step is undoubtedly taken in the moment contained in the Ontological Proof. But it is not the need of thus going further, upon which Kant grounds his objection to this proof. On the contrary, his argument is conducted from points of view which lie wholly within the sphere of this proof, and which do not touch it.
But the objection referred to is not the only one which Kant brings forward against the line of argument followed by the Cosmological Proof. He goes on () to expose the “further assumptions,” a “whole nest” of which, he declares, is concealed in it.
It contains, above all, the transcendental principle according to which we reason from what is contingent to a cause. This principle, however, applies in the world of sense only, and has no meaning whatever outside of it. For the purely intellectual conception of the contingent cannot possibly produce a synthetic proposition such as that of causality, a proposition which has a meaning and a use merely in the world of sense, but which is supposed to help us to get beyond the world of sense. What is maintained here, on the one hand, is the well-known doctrine, which is Kant’s main doctrine, of the inadmissibility of getting beyond sense by means of thought, and of the limitation of the use and meaning of the categories of thought to the world of sense. The elucidation of this doctrine does not come within the scope of our present treatment of the subject. What has to be said on this point may be summed up in the following question: If thought cannot pass beyond the world of sense, would it not be necessary, on the other hand, to show first of all how it is conceivable that thought can enter into the world of sense? The other assertion is that the intellectual conception of the contingent cannot form the basis of a synthetic proposition such as that of causality. As a matter of fact, it is by means of this intellectual category of contingency that the temporal world as present to perception is conceived of; and by employing this very category which is an intellectual one, thought has already passed beyond the world of sense, and transferred itself to another sphere, without having found it necessary to endeavour to pass beyond the world of sense by using first of all the category of causality. Then, again, this intellectual conception of the contingent is supposed to be incapable of producing a synthetic proposition such as is involved in the idea of causality. As a matter of fact, however, it has to be shown that the finite passes through itself, through what it is meant to be, through its own content, to its Other, to the Infinite itself; and this is what forms the basis of a synthetic proposition according to Kant’s use of the term. The nature of the contingent is of a similar kind. It is not necessary to take the category of causality as referring to the Other into which contingency passes over; on the contrary, this Other is, to begin with, the absolute necessity, and is consequently Substance also. The relation of substantiality, however, is itself one of those synthetic relations which Kant refers to as the categories, and this just means that “the purely intellectual characteristic of the contingent” — for the categories are essentially the characteristic qualities of thought — gives rise to the synthetic principle of substantiality, so that if we posit contingency we posit substantiality as well. This principle which expresses an intellectual relation, and is a category, is certainly not employed here in an element which is heterogeneous, namely, in the world of sense, but, on the contrary, in the intellectual world, which is its natural home. If it had no defect otherwise, it might, in fact, be applied with absolute justice in that sphere in which we are concerned with God, who can be conceived of only in thought and in Spirit, and this in opposition to its employment in the sensuous element, which is foreign to it.
The second fundamental fallacy to which Kant directs attention () is that contained in arguing from the impossibility of there being an infinite series of successive given causes in the world of sense, to the existence of a first cause. We are not justified in arguing thus on the principles which guide the use of reason even in experience itself, and still less can we extend this fundamental principle beyond experience. It is quite true we cannot within the world of sense and experience reason to the existence of a first cause, for in this world as a finite world there can be only conditioned causes. But just because of this, reason is not only justified in passing into the intelligible sphere, but is forced to do it; or rather, as a matter of fact, it is only in this sphere that reason is at home. It does not pass beyond the world of sense, but because it has this idea of a first cause it simply finds itself in another region, and we can look for a meaning in reason only in so far as it and its idea are thought of as being independent of the world of sense, and as having an independent standing in-and-for-themselves. The third charge brought by Kant against reason in connection with this proof is that it finds what is a false self-satisfaction, inasmuch as in the matter of the completion of the series of causes it finally casts aside a condition of any kind, while, as a matter of fact, there can be no necessity apart from a condition; and he objects, again, that the fact that we cannot conceive of anything further is held to be a completion of the conception. Now it is certain that if we are dealing with an unconditioned necessity, with an absolutely necessary Essence, we can reach it only in so far as it is conceived of as unconditioned, that is, in so far as the characteristic quality of having conditions has been done away with. But, adds Kant, anything necessary cannot exist apart from conditions. A necessity of this sort which rests on conditions, that is, on conditions external to it, is a merely external, conditioned necessity; while an unconditioned absolute necessity is simply one which contains its conditions within itself, if we must speak of conditions in connection with it. The difficulty here is just the truly dialectic relation above referred to according to which the condition, or whatever other definition may be given of contingent existence or the finite, is something whose very nature it is to rise to the unconditioned, to the infinite, and thus in what is conditioned to do away with what conditions, and in the act of mediating to do away with the mediation. Kant, however, did not penetrate beyond the relations of the Understanding to the conception of this infinite negativity. Continuing this argument, he says (), we cannot avoid having the thought, and yet we cannot entertain it, that a Being whom we conceive of as the Highest should, as it were, say to Himself: I am from eternity to eternity, besides me there is nothing, unless what exists by my will; but whence then am I? Here everything sinks under us, and floats without support or foothold in the presence merely of speculative reason, while it costs the latter nothing to allow the greatest as well as the smallest perfection to go. But there is one thing which speculative reason must above all else “allow to go,” and that is the putting of such a question as, Whence am I? into the mouth of the absolutely necessary and unconditioned. As if that outside of which nothing exists unless through its will, that which is simply infinite, could look beyond itself for an other than itself, and ask about something beyond itself.
In bringing forward these objections, Kant, in short, gives vent to the view which he had, to begin with, in common with Jacobi, and which afterwards came to be the regular beaten track of argument, the view, namely, that where we do not have the fact of being conditioned along with what conditions, it is impossible to form conceptions at all — in other words, that where the rational begins, reason ends.
The fourth error to which Kant draws attention is connected with the ostensible confusion between the logical possibility of the conception of all reality and the transcendental characteristics, which latter will be further dealt with when we come to consider Kant’s criticism of the Ontological Proof.
To this criticism Kant adds () the “discovery” and “explanation” — made in his peculiar style — of the dialectic illusion which exists in all transcendental proofs of the existence of a necessary Essence, an explanation which contains nothing new; and then we have in Kant’s usual fashion an incessant repetition of what is always one and the same assurance, namely, that we cannot think the Thing-in-itself.
He calls the Cosmological Proof, as he does the Ontological, a transcendental proof, because it is independent of empirical principles; that is to say, it is supposed to be established, not by reasoning from any particular quality of experience whatsoever, but from pure principles of reason, and even abandons that method of deduction according to which existence is given through empirical consciousness, in order to base itself on what are simply pure conceptions. What better method indeed could philosophical proof adopt than that of basing itself only on pure conceptions? Kant, on the contrary, in speaking thus, intends to say the very worst he possibly can of this proof. So far, however, as the dialectic illusion is concerned, the discovery of which is here made by Kant, we find it to consist in the fact that while I must indeed allow that existence in general has a necessary element in it, no single thing can, on the other hand, be thought of as necessary in itself, and that I can never complete the act of going back to the conditions of existence without assuming the existence of something necessary while I can at the same time never start from this.
It must in justice be allowed that this remark contains the essential moment on which the whole question turns. What is necessary in itself must show that it has its beginning in itself, and must be conceived of in such a way as to allow of its being proved that its beginning is in itself. This requirement is indeed the only interesting point, and we must assume that it lay at the bottom of what was previously referred to, namely, the trouble Kant took to prove that the Cosmological Proof rests on the Ontological. The sole question is as to how we can begin to show that anything starts from itself, or rather how we can combine the two ideas that the Infinite starts from an Other, and yet in doing this starts equally from itself.
As regards the so-called explanation and solution, so to speak, of this illusion, it will be seen to be of the same character as the solution which he has given of what he calls the antinomies of reason. If I must think ( of a certain necessary element as belonging to existing things in general, and yet am not warranted in thinking that anything is necessary in itself, the unavoidable conclusion is that necessity and contingency cannot apply to, or have any connection with, the things themselves, because otherwise we would be landed in a contradiction. Here we have that tenderness towards things which will not permit any contradiction to be attached to them, although even the most superficial experience, equally with experience of the most thorough kind, everywhere shows that these things are full of contradictions. Kant then goes on to say that neither of these two fundamental principles, of contingency and necessity, is objective; but that they can in any case be only subjective principles of reason, implying, on the one hand, that we cannot stop short unless with an explanation completed in an a priori way, while, on the other hand, any such complete explanation is not to be looked for, that is, not in the empirical sphere. Thus the contradiction is preserved and is left wholly unsolved, while it is at the same time transferred from things to reason. If the circumstance that the contradiction such as it is here held to be, and such as it actually is, is not directly solved, implies a defect, then the defect would as a matter of fact have to be transferred to the so-called things — which are partly merely empirical and finite, but are also partly that Thing-in-itself which is incapable of manifesting itself — rather than to reason, which, even as understood by Kant, is the faculty which deals with ideas, with the Unconditioned and the Infinite. But in truth reason can in any case bear the weight of the contradiction, and can certainly solve it too; and things, at all events, know how to bear it, or rather, we should say, they are only contradiction in the form of existence; and this is true of that Kantian schema of the Thing-in-itself quite as much as of empirical things, and only in so far as they are rational can they solve it directly within themselves.
In Kant’s criticism of the Cosmological Proof those moments are at least discussed on which the point at issue really turns. We have noted two circumstances connected with this criticism: first, that the Cosmological Argument starts from Being as a presupposition, and from this goes on to the content, to the conception of God; and second, that Kant finds fault with the line of argument on the ground that it rests on the Ontological Proof, i.e., on the Proof in which the conception is presupposed, and in which we advance from this conception to Being. Since, according to the standpoint we at present occupy in conducting our investigation, the conception of God has no further determinate quality than that of the Infinite, it follows that what we are concerned with is, speaking generally, the Being of the Infinite. In accordance with the distinction previously referred to, in the one instance it is Being from which we start, and which has to get a determinate character as the Infinite; and in the other it is the Infinite from which we start, and which has to get a determinate character as having Being. Further, in the Cosmological Proof finite Being appears as a starting-point adopted empirically. The Proof essentially sets out from experience, as Kant says (), in order to lay a really firm foundation for itself. The relation here implied ought more strictly, however, to be referred back to the form of the judgment in general. In every judgment the subject is an idea which has been presupposed, and which is defined in the predicate, that is, an idea which is defined or determined in a general way by thought, which means, again, that the determinations or specific qualities of the content of the subject have to be indicated, even if, as in the case of the material predicates, red, hard, and so on, this general mode of determination, which is, so to speak, the share thought has in the matter, is really nothing more than the empty form of universality. Thus, when it is said that God is infinite, eternal, and so on, God is, to begin with, as a subject simply something hypothetical, existing in idea, and it is only in the predicate that it is first asserted what He is. So far as the subject is concerned, we do not know what He is, that is, what content He has, or what is the determinate character of the content, as otherwise it would be superfluous to have the copula “is” and to attach the predicate to it. Then further, since the subject represents the hypothetical element which exists in idea, this presupposition can be taken as signifying what has Being, and as implying that the subject is, or, on the other hand, that it is at first only an idea, that instead of being posited by sense-intuition, or sense-perception, it is posited in the sphere of ideas by imagination, by conception, by reason, and that it, in fact, gets such content as it has in the sphere of general ideas.
If we express these two moments in accordance with this more definite form, we shall at once get a more definite idea of the demands which are made upon them. Those moments give rise to the two following propositions —
Being defined, to begin with, as finite, is infinite; and The Infinite is.
For, so far as the first proposition is concerned, it is evident that it is Being properly so called which is presupposed as a fixed subject, and that it is what must in any view of it remain, that is, it is what must have the predicate of the Infinite attached to it. Being in so far as it is, to begin with, characterised as finite, and because the finite and the Infinite are simultaneously conceived of as subjects, represents what is common to both. The real point is not that a transition is made from Being to the Infinite as representing something different from Being, but, on the contrary, that we pass from the finite to the Infinite, and that in this transition Being remains unaltered. It is consequently shown here to be the permanent subject whose first characteristic, namely, finitude, is translated into infinitude. It is almost superfluous to remark that since Being is conceived of as subject and finitude as simply one characteristic, and, in fact, as the subsequent predicate shows, as a purely transitory characteristic, when we are dealing with the proposition taken by itself alone: Being is infinite, or is to be characterised as infinite, we must by the term Being understand Being as such, and not empirical Being, not the moral finite world.
This first proposition is accordingly the proposition of the Cosmological Argument, Being is the subject, and this presupposition whether it is taken as given or deduced, it does not matter how, is in reference to the act of proof as mediation through grounds or reasons in general, the immediate in general. This consciousness that the subject represents what is presupposed in general, is what is alone to be regarded as the important thing in connection with knowledge reached by demonstration. The predicate of the proposition is the content which must be proved to belong to the subject. Here it is the Infinite, which has consequently to be shown to be the predicate of Being and of its content, and as reached by means of mediation.
The second proposition: the Infinite is, has the more definitely determinate content as its subject, and here it is Being which has to show itself to be what is mediated. It is this proposition which forms the real point of interest in the Ontological Proof, and has to appear as the result. So far as the demands of the kind of proof sought by the Understanding, and of the mere knowledge of the Understanding, are concerned, the proof of this second proposition as connected with the first proposition of the Cosmological Argument may be dispensed with; but it is certainly demanded by the requirements of reason in its higher form, though this higher requirement of reason appears in Kant’s criticism disguised, so to speak, as a mere piece of chicanery, which has been deduced from some more remote consequence.
The fact, however, that these two propositions are necessary rests on the nature of the Notion, in so far as this latter is conceived of in accordance with its true nature, that is, in a speculative way. Here, however, it is presupposed that this knowledge of the Notion has been got from logic, just as it is presupposed in the same way that logic tells us that a true proof is rendered impossible by the very nature of such propositions as the two referred to. This may, however, be briefly indicated here as well, in accordance with the explanation which has been given regarding the peculiar nature of these judgments, and it is all the more fitting to make this plain at this point, since the current principle of so-called immediate knowledge recognises and takes into consideration just this very proof of the Understanding and no other, a proof which is inadmissible in philosophy. What has to be demonstrated is a proposition, a judgment, in fact, with a subject and predicate. We cannot, to begin with, find any fault with the demand here implied, and it looks as if the whole point turned on the nature of the act of proof. But the very fact that it is a judgment which has to be proved at once renders any true philosophical proof impossible. For it is the subject which is presupposed, and consequently becomes the standard for the predicate the truth of which has to be proved; and accordingly the essential criterion so far as the proposition is concerned, is merely whether the predicate is adequate to the subject or not, and idea or ordinary thought, on which the presupposition is based, is taken as deciding the truth. But the main and only concern of knowledge, the claims of which have not been satisfied, and which have not even been taken into account, is just to find out whether this very presupposition contained in the subject, and consequently the further specification which it gets through the predicate, is the totality of the proposition and is true.
This is something which reason forces us to, working from within outward, unconsciously as it were. From what has been already adduced, it is evident that an attempt has been made to find what are called several proofs of the existence of God: the one set of which is based on one of the propositions above indicated, that, namely, in which Being is the subject and constitutes the presupposition, and in which the Infinite is a characteristic posited in it by means of mediation; and the other set of which has for its basis the reverse proposition, by means of which the first of the propositions loses its one-sidedness. Here the defective element, namely, the fact that Being is presupposed, is cancelled, and conversely it is now Being which has to be posited as mediated.
What has to be accomplished by the proof has accordingly been stated in a complete enough way, but still the nature of the proof itself as such has been in consequence not touched upon. For each of the propositions has been stated separately, the proof of it accordingly starts from the presupposition which the subject contains, and which has each time to be shown to be necessary through the other, and not as immediately necessary. Either proposition presupposes the other, and no true beginning can be found for them. For this very reason it appears at first to be a matter of indifference where a beginning is made. Only the starting-point is not a matter of indifference, and the whole point just is to find out why it is not. The question is not as to whether or not we are to begin with one or other of the presuppositions, that is, with the immediate characteristic, the ordinary idea; but rather, what we have got to see is that no beginning can be made with any such presupposition, that is, that it cannot be regarded and treated as forming the basis, the permanent foundation of the proof.
For the statement that the presuppositions belonging to each of the two propositions — of which the one is proved by the other — have to be represented as mediated, when taken in its more obvious sense, deprives them of the essential meaning which belongs to them as immediate characteristics. For the fact that they are posited as mediated implies that their essential character consists in their being transitory rather than permanent subjects. In this way, however, the whole nature of the proof is altered, for it stood in need of having the subject as a fixed basis and standard. If it starts from something which has a transitory character, it loses all support, and cannot, in fact, have any existence at all. If we consider the form of the judgment more closely, it will be seen that what has just been explained is involved in the form itself, and, in fact, the judgment is what it is just owing to its form. It has, that is, for its subject something immediate, something which has Being in general, while as its predicate, which is meant to express what the subject is, it has something universal, namely, thought. The judgment consequently itself signifies that what has Being is not a something having Being, but is a thought.
This will at once become clearer from the example with which we are dealing, and which will better help us to understand, however, why we are limited to what the example directly contains, namely, the first of the two propositions, in which the Infinite is posited as what has been mediated. The express consideration of the other, in which Being appears as a result, will be taken up in a different place.
The major proposition of the Cosmological Proof in the more abstract form in which we took it, contains what is the essential element of the connection of the finite and the Infinite, the thought, namely, that the latter is got by way of hypothesis out of the former. The proposition, “If the finite exists, the Infinite exists also,” put in a more definite form is primarily the following: “The Being of the finite is not only its Being, but is also the Being of the Infinite.” We have thus reduced it to its simplest form, and have left out of account those developments which might be added to it by means of the still further specified forms of reflection which belong to the Infinite as having its Being conditioned by the finite, or to the Infinite as being presupposed through the finite, or to the relation of causality between finite and Infinite. All these relations are contained in that one simple form. If, in accordance with the definition previously given, we speak of Being in more definite terms as the subject of the judgment, the proposition will run thus: “Being is to be defined not as finite only but also as infinite.” The real point is the demonstration of this connection. This, as was shown above, springs from the conception of the finite, and this speculative way of dealing with the nature of the finite, with the mediation out of which the Infinite proceeds, is the pivot round which the whole question, namely, as to the knowledge of God and the philosophical understanding of Him, turns. The essential point, however, in this mediation is, that the Being of the finite is not the affirmative, but that, on the contrary, the Infinite is posited and mediated by the abrogation of this Being of the finite.
The essential and formal defect in the Cosmological Proof consists in the fact that finite Being is not only taken directly as the beginning and starting-point, but is regarded as something true, something affirmative, with an existence of its own. All those forms of reflection referred to, such as the presupposed, the conditioned, causality, have this in common, that what forms the presupposition, the condition, the effect, are taken as affirmative, and the connection is not conceived of as a transition, which it essentially is. What the study of the finite from a speculative point of view really yields, is not merely the thought, that if the finite exists, the Infinite exists too, not that Being is to be defined as not merely finite, but that it is further to be defined as infinite. If the finite were this affirmative, the major proposition would be the proposition — finite Being as finite is infinite, for it would be its permanent finitude which the Infinite included in itself. Those characteristics such as presupposition, condition, causality, when taken together, give a still greater stability to the affirmative show or appearance of the Being of the finite, and are for this very reason only finite, that is, untrue relations, relations of what is untrue. To get to know that this is their nature is what alone constitutes the logical interest attaching to them, though their dialectic in accordance with their special characteristics takes in each case a special form, which is, however, based on the general dialectic of the finite already referred to. The proposition which ought to constitute the major proposition of the syllogism must accordingly take the following form rather: the Being of the finite is not its own Being, but is, on the contrary, the Being of its Other, namely, the Infinite. Or to put it otherwise, Being which is characterised as finite possesses this characteristic only in the sense that it cannot exist independently in relation to the Infinite, but is, on the contrary, ideal merely, a moment of the Infinite. Consequently the minor proposition: the finite is — disappears in any affirmative sense, and if we may still say it exists, we mean that its existence is merely an appearance or phenomenal existence. It is just the fact that the finite world is merely a manifestation or appearance which constitutes the absolute power of the Infinite.
The form taken by the syllogism of the Understanding has no place for the dialectic character which thus marks the finite, nor has it any way of expressing it. It is not in a position to express the rational element in it; and since religious elevation is the rational element itself, it cannot find satisfaction in that form of the Understanding, for there is more in it than this form can express. It is accordingly in itself of the greatest importance that Kant should have deprived the so-called proofs of the existence of God of the regard they enjoyed, even though he had done no more than create a prejudice against them by showing their insufficiency. Only, his criticism of these proofs is insufficient in itself; and besides, he failed to recognise the deeper basis upon which these proofs rest, and so was unable to do justice to their true elements. It was he who at the same time began the complete maiming of reason, which has since his day been content to be nothing more than the source of purely immediate knowledge.
So far we have been dealing with the elucidation of the conception which constitutes the logical element in the first characteristic of religion, and have been regarding it, on the one hand, from the side from which it was viewed in metaphysics in its earlier phase; while, on the other hand, we have been looking at the outward form in which it was put. But this is not sufficient if we are to get a real knowledge of the speculative conception of this characteristic. Still, one part of this knowledge has already been indicated, that, namely, which has reference to the passing over of finite Being into infinite Being, and we have now to indicate briefly the other part, the detailed elucidation of which will be deferred till we come to deal with another form of religion to be taken up subsequently. This is just what appeared previously in the form taken by the proposition: the Infinite is, and in which consequently Being is defined in general as what is mediated. The proof has to demonstrate this mediation. It already follows from the foregoing remarks that the two propositions cannot be separated from each other. The very fact that the form of the syllogism belonging to the Understanding is abandoned so far as the one is concerned, implies that the separation of the two has been abandoned also. The moment which has still to be dealt with is accordingly already contained in the given development of the dialectic of the finite.
If, however, in showing how the finite passes over into the Infinite, we have made it appear as if the finite were taken as the starting-point for the Infinite, so, too, the other proposition, which is merely the converse proposition or transition, seems to be necessarily defined as a passing over from the Infinite to the finite, or, in other words, has to take on the form of the proposition: “The Infinite is finite.” In this equation the proposition: the Infinite is, would not contain the entire characteristic which has to be dealt with here. This difference disappears, however, when we consider that Being, since it is the Immediate, is directly differentiated from the characteristic of the Infinite, and is, as a direct consequence of this, characterised simply as finite. The logical nature which thus belongs to Being or immediacy in general is, however, presupposed as given by logic. This characteristic of the finitude of Being, however, comes directly into view in the connection in which Being here stands. For the Infinite, in resolving to become Being, determines itself to what is other than itself; but then the Other of the Infinite is just the finite.
If, further, as was previously indicated, the subject appears in the judgment as something presupposed, what has Being in fact, while the predicate is something universal, namely, thought, then in the proposition, “The Infinite is,” a proposition which is at the same time a judgment, the determination seems rather to be reversed, since the predicate expressly involves Being, while the subject, the Infinite namely, exists in thought only, though certainly in objective thought. Still we might remember the common idea that Being itself is only a thought, chiefly in so far as it is regarded in this abstract and logical way, and all the more if the Infinite, too, is only a thought, for in this case its predicate also could not possibly be anything else but a subjective thought. In any case, the predicate regarded from the point of view of its form in the judgment is the Universal and is thought, while considered according to its content or determinateness it is Being, and taken in a more definite sense it is immediate and also finite or particular Being. If, however, it is meant by this, that Being, because it has been thought, is therefore no longer Being as such, then this is simply an absurd idealism which maintains that if anything is thought it therefore ceases to be, or even that what is cannot be thought, and that therefore only nothing is thinkable. Still the idealism which enters into that aspect of the entire conception or notion to be considered here will be discussed later on when we enter on the explanation already indicated. The point, however, to which attention should really be directed is, that it is just the judgment indicated which, owing to the antithesis of its content and its form, contains in it that counter-stroke which expresses the nature of the absolute union in one of the two previously separated sides, and which is the nature of the Notion itself.
Put shortly, what we have so far learned regarding the Infinite is, that it is the affirmation of the self-annulling finite, the negation of the negation, what is mediated, but mediated by the annulling of the mediation. This already means that the Infinite is simple reference to self, that abstract equality with self which is called Being. Or, it is the self-annulling mediation, while the Immediate is just the mediation absorbed and annulled, in other words, that into which the self-annulling mediation passes, that which it becomes by annulling itself.
It is just in consequence of this that this affirmation, this thing which is equal to itself in one, is thus immediate and equal to itself only when it is simply the negation of the negation, that is, it itself contains the negation, the finite, but as an appearance or semblance which annuls itself and is preserved in something higher. Or, since the immediacy which it comes to be by this act — that abstract equality with itself into which it passes over and which is Being — is only the moment of the Infinite conceived of in a one-sided way, and the affirmative as representing it appears only as this entire process, and is therefore finite, it follows that the Infinite, in determining itself in the form of Being, determines itself as finitude. But finitude and this immediate Being are consequently just the negation which negates itself. This apparent end, the passing of the living dialectic into the dead repose of the result, is itself only the beginning again of this living dialectic.
This is the Notion, the logical and rational element in the first abstract characteristic of God and religion. The side represented by the latter is expressed by that moment of the Notion which starts from immediate Being, and which is absorbed in and taken up into the Infinite. The objective side, however, as such is contained in the self-unfolding of the Infinite into Being and finitude, which, just because of this, is merely momentary and transitory — transitory merely, in virtue of the infinitude whose manifestation it merely is, and which represents the force in it. The so-called Cosmological Proof is of use solely in connection with the effort to bring into consciousness what the inner life, the pure rational element of the inner movement, really is, and which, regarded in its subjective aspect, is called religious elevation. If this movement, when it appears in that form of the Understanding in which we have seen it, is not conceived of and understood as it is in-and-for-itself, still the substantial element which forms its basis does not lose anything in consequence. It is this substantial element which penetrates the imperfection of the form and exercises its power; or rather, we might say, it is itself the real and substantial force. The religious elevation of the soul to God consequently recognises itself in that expression of the truth, imperfect as it is, and is aware of its inner and true meaning, and so protects itself against the syllogism of the Understanding and its methods which stunt this true meaning. That is why, as Kant says (in the place already referred to, ), “this method of proof undoubtedly most readily carries persuasion with it, not only for the ordinary understanding, but for the speculative understanding too; and it obviously contains, too, the main lines on which all the proofs of natural theology are based, and which have at all times been followed, and will be still further followed, however much people may try to trick them out and conceal them under all sorts of fancy embellishments;” and, I add, it is possible by following the Understanding entirely to miss the meaning of the substantial element contained in these great fundamental lines of argument, and to imagine they have been formally refuted by the critical understanding, or, it may be, in virtue of the want of understanding as well as the want of reason characteristic of so-called immediate knowledge, politely to throw these arguments on one side unrefuted or to ignore them.
HAVING GIVEN THIS explanation regarding the general scope of the characteristics of the content with which we are dealing, we shall now consider the course followed by the act of elevation first mentioned, in that particular form in which it is at present before us. This course consists simply in reasoning from the contingency of the world to an absolutely necessary Essence belonging to it. If we look at this syllogism as expressed in a formal way and at its particular elements, we find that it runs thus: The contingent does not rest upon itself, but, speaking generally, rests upon the presupposition of something which is in itself absolutely necessary, and which we call its essence, ground, or cause. But the world is contingent, the single things in it are contingent, and it as representing the whole is the aggregate of these; therefore the world presupposes the existence of something absolutely necessary in itself.
The determination from which this conclusion starts is the contingency of material things. If we take these things according as we find them in sensation and in ordinary thought, and if we compare the various processes which go on in the human mind, then we have a right to assert it to be a fact of experience that material things taken by themselves are regarded as contingent. Individual things do not come out of themselves, and do not pass away of themselves; being contingent, they are destined to drop away, and this is not something which happens to them in an accidental way merely, but is what constitutes their nature. Even if the course they follow is one which develops within themselves and is guided by rule and law, still it goes on till it reaches what is their end, or rather, it does nothing but lead up to their end; and so, too, their existence is interfered with in all kinds of ways by other things, and is brought to an end by external causes. If they are regarded as conditioned, then we can see that their conditions are things which exist independently outside of them, and which may correspond to them or not, and by which they are temporarily supported, or, it may be, are not. To begin with, they are seen to be co-ordinated in space without being ranged together in accordance with any other relation naturally belonging to them. The most heterogeneous elements are found side by side, and they can be separated without any kind of derangement being caused in the existence either of the one thing or the other. In the same way they succeed one another outwardly in time. They are, in fact, finite; and however independent they may seem, they are essentially devoid of independence, owing to the limits attaching to their finitude. They are; they are in a real sense, but their reality has the value of something which is merely a possibility; they are, and can therefore equally well either be or not be.
Their existence reveals the presence not only of connections between conditions, that is, the points of dependence owing to which they come to be characterised as contingent, but also the connections of cause and effect, the regular rules which govern the course they follow both inwardly and outwardly — laws, in fact. These elements of dependence, this conformity to law, raises them above the category of contingency into the region of necessity, and thus necessity is found within that sphere which we thought of as occupied by what was contingent. Contingency claims things in virtue of their isolation, and therefore they may either exist or not exist; but then, as governed by law, they are the opposite of what is contingent, they are not isolated, but are qualified, limited, related, in fact, to one another. They do not, however, fare any the better because of the presence of this antithesis in their nature. Their isolation gives them a semblance of independence; but the connection in which they stand with other things — with each other, that is — directly expresses the fact that these single things are not independent, shows that they are conditioned and are affected by other things, and are, in fact, necessarily conditioned by other things, and not by themselves. These necessary elements, these laws, would themselves consequently constitute the independent element. Anything which exists essentially in connection with something else has its essential character and stability not in itself, but in this connection. It is the connection upon which these are dependent. But these connections, when defined as causes and effects, the condition and the fact of being conditioned, and so on, have themselves a limited character, and are themselves contingent in relation to each other in the sense that any one of them may equally well exist or not exist, and may just as easily be disturbed by circumstances — that is, be interfered with by things which are themselves contingent, and have their active working and value destroyed, as the separate things over which they have no advantage in the matter of contingency. Those connections, on the other hand, to which necessity must be attributed, those laws, are not in any sense what we call things, but are rather abstractions. If the connection of necessity thus manifests itself in the region of contingent things in laws, and chiefly in the relations of cause and effect, this necessity itself takes the form of something conditioned, or limited — appears, in fact, as an outward necessity. It is itself relegated to the class of categories applying to things, both in virtue of their isolation, that is, their externality, and conversely in virtue of their being conditioned, of their limitation and dependence. In the connection expressed by causes and effects we get not only the satisfaction which is wanting in the empty unrelated isolation of things, which are just for this reason called contingent; but the indefinite abstraction which attaches to the expression “things,” the element of variableness in them, disappears in this relation of necessity in which things become causes, original facts, substances that are active and indeterminate. But in the connections which hold good in this sphere the causes are themselves finite; beginning as causes, their Being is isolated, and therefore contingent; or it is not isolated, and in that case they are effects, and are consequently not independent, but posited through an Other. The various series of causes and effects are partly contingent relatively to each other, and are partly themselves continued into the so-called Infinite, and thus contain in their content nothing but those situations and forms of existence of which each is finite in itself; and what ought to give stability to the connection of the series, the Infinite namely, is not only something above and beyond this world, but is a mere negative, the very meaning of which is relative merely, and is conditioned by what is to be negated by it, and is consequently for this very reason not negated.
Spirit, however, raises itself above this crowd of things contingent, above the merely outward and relative necessity involved in them, above the Infinite, which is a mere negative, and reaches a necessity which does not any longer go beyond itself, but is in-and-for-itself, included within itself, and is determined as complete in itself, while all other determinations are posited by it and are dependent upon it.
These may be in the form of ideas of an accidental or of a more concentrated kind, the essential moments of thought belonging to the inner life of the human spirit, to the reason which does not fully attain in a methodical and formal way the consciousness of its inner process, and still less gets so far as to be able to investigate those thought-determinations through which it passes, or the connections they involve. We have now got to see, however, if thought, which in the process of reasoning proceeds in a formal and methodical way, rightly conceives of and expresses the course followed in the elevation of the soul to God, which, so far, we have assumed to be a fact, and which we have been accustomed to deal with only in connection with the few fundamental characteristics belonging to it. Conversely, again, we have to find out whether those thoughts and the connection between them can be shown to be justified, and have their reality proved, by an examination of the thoughts in themselves, for it is only in this way that the elevation of the soul to God really ceases to be a supposition, and that the unstable element in any right conception of it disappears. We must, however, decline to enter upon this examination here, seeing that if it were demanded on its own account we should have to go on to the ultimate analysis of thought. It has to be carried out in a thorough way in logic, the science of thought; for I identify logic with metaphysic, since the latter, too, is really nothing but an attempt to deal with some concrete content, such as God, the world, the soul, but in such a way that these objects have to be conceived of as noumena, that is, we have to deal with the element of thought in them. At this point it will be preferable to take up the logical results merely, rather than the formal development. An investigation of the proofs of the existence of God cannot be undertaken independently at all, if it is required to have philosophical and scientific completeness. Science is the developed connection of the Idea in its totality. In so far as any individual object is lifted out of that totality, which must be the goal of the scientific development of the Idea, as representing the only method of exhibiting its truth, limits must be set to the investigation undertaken, and these it must presuppose to be definitely fixed, as is the case in other instances of scientific inquiry. Still the investigation may come to have an appearance of independence, owing to the fact that the unexplained presuppositions, which are what constitutes the limits of what is dealt with, and which analysis reaches in the course of its progress, are in themselves in harmony with consciousness. Every work contains such ultimate ideas, or fundamental principles, upon which either consciously or unconsciously the content is based. There is in it a circumscribed horizon of thoughts which are no further analysed, the horizon of which rests upon the culture it may be of a period, of a nation, or of some scientific circle, and beyond which there is no need to go. In fact it would be prejudicial to what is called popular comprehension to attempt to extend this horizon beyond the limits of ordinary ideas by analysing these, and so to make it include speculative or philosophical conceptions.
Still, since the subject of these lectures belongs in itself essentially to the domain of philosophy, we cannot dispense with abstract conceptions. We have, however, already mentioned those which belong to this first standpoint, and we have only to range them together in a definite way in order to reach the speculative element; for, speaking generally, to deal with anything in a speculative or philosophical way simply means to bring into connection the thoughts which we already have.
The thoughts, therefore, which have been already indicated, consist, first of all, of the following main characteristics: a thing, a law, &c., is contingent in virtue of its isolation; the fact of its existence or non-existence does not bring about any derangement or alteration so far as other things are concerned. Then the fact that it is quite as little kept in existence by them, and that any stability it gets owing to them is wholly insufficient, gives them that very insufficient semblance of independence which is just what constitutes their contingency. The idea of necessity as applied to any existing thing, on the other hand, requires that it should stand in some connection with other things, so that regarded in any of its aspects it is seen to be completely determined by other existing things, in the form of conditions or causes, and cannot be separated from them or come into being of itself, nor can there be any condition, cause, or fact of connection by means of which it can be so separated, nor any such instance of connection as can contradict the other which qualifies the thing. In accordance with this description we place the contingency of a thing in its isolation, in the want of perfect connection with other things. This is the first point.
Conversely, again, since an existing thing thus stands in a relation of perfect connection, it is in all its aspects conditioned and dependent, is in fact perfectly wanting in independence. It is, on the other hand, in necessity alone that we find the independence of a thing. What is necessary must be. This fact that it must be, expresses its independence by suggesting that what is necessary is, because it is. This is the other point.
We thus see that the necessity of anything requires two sorts of opposed characteristics: on the one hand, its independence, in which, however, it is isolated, and which makes its existence or non-existence a matter of indifference; and, on the other, its being based upon and contained in a complete relation to everything else whereby it is surrounded, and by the connection involved in which, it is kept in existence; this means that it is not independent. The necessary element is a recognised fact quite as much as the contingent element. Regarded from the point of view of the first of these ideas, everything exists in an orderly connection. The contingent is separated from the necessary, and points beyond it to a necessary something, which, however, when we look at it more closely, is itself included in contingency, just because, being posited by another, it is dependent. When, however, it is taken out of any such connection it is isolated, and is consequently directly contingent. The distinctions drawn are accordingly merely imaginary.
Since it is not our intention to examine further the nature of these thoughts, and since we wish in the meantime to leave the antithesis of necessity and contingency out of account, we shall confine ourselves to what is suggested by the idea we have given of them, namely, that neither of the determinations is sufficient to express necessity, but that for this both are required — independence, so that the necessary may not be mediated by an Other; and also the mediation of this independence in connection with the Other. They thus contradict each other, but since they both belong to the one necessity they must not contradict each other in the unity in which they are joined together in it. Our view of the matter renders it necessary that the thoughts which are united in this necessity should be brought into connection in our minds. In this unity the mediation with an Other will thus itself partake of independence, and this, as a reference to self, will have the mediation with an Other within itself. In this determination, however, both can be united only in such a way that the mediation with an Other is at the same time a mediation with self, that is, their union must imply that the mediation with an Other abolishes itself, and becomes a mediation with self. Thus the unity with self is not a unity which is abstract identity, such as we saw in the form of the isolation in which the thing is related only to itself, and in which its contingency lies. The one-sidedness, on account of which alone it is in contradiction with the equally one-sided mediation by an Other, is done away with, and these untruths have thus disappeared. The unity thus characterised is the true unity, and when truly known is the speculative or philosophical unity. Necessity as thus defined, since it unites in itself these opposite characteristics, is seen to be something more than a simple idea or a simple determinateness; and further, the disappearance of the opposite characteristics in something higher is not merely our act, or a matter with which we only have to do, in the sense that we only bring it about, but expresses the very nature and action of these characteristics themselves, since they are united in one characteristic. So, too, these two moments of necessity, namely, that its mediation with an Other is in itself, and that it does away with this mediation and posits itself by its own act because of this very unity, are not separate acts. In the mediation with an Other it relates itself to itself, that is, the Other through which it mediates itself with itself is itself. Thus as an Other it is negated; it is itself the Other, but only momentarily — momentarily without, however, introducing the quality of time into the notion, a quality which first appears when the notion comes to have a definite existence. This Other-Being or otherness is essentially something which disappears in something higher, and it is in determinate existence also that it appears as a real Other. But the absolute necessity is the necessity which is adequate to its notion or conception.
IN THE PREVIOUS Lecture the notion or conception of absolute necessity was explained — of absolute necessity, I repeat. Very often absolute means nothing more than abstract, and very frequently, too, it is imagined that when the word absolute is used everything is said that is necessary, and that no further definition can or ought to be given. As a matter of fact it is just with this definition that we are chiefly concerned. Absolute necessity is abstract, the abstract pure and simple, inasmuch as it depends on itself and does not subsist in or from or through an Other. But we have seen that it is not only adequate to its notion or conception, whatever that notion be, so that we were able to compare this notion and its external existence; but that it represents this very adequacy itself. Thus what might be taken as the external aspect is contained in itself, so that this very fact that it depends on itself, this identity or reference to self which constitutes the isolation of things in virtue of which they are contingent, is a form of independence which again is really a want of independence. Possibility is an abstraction of the same kind. A thing is possible if it does not contradict itself, that is, it is what is merely identical with itself, something in which there is no kind of identity with an Other, while, on the other hand, it has not its Other within itself. Contingency and possibility differ only in this, that the contingent has in addition a definite existence. The possible has only the possibility of existence. But the contingent itself has an existence which has absolutely no value beyond being a possibility; it is, but quite as much it is not. In the case of contingency, the nature of determinate Being or existence belonging to it is, as has been already remarked, so far evident that it is seen at the same time to have the character of something which is virtually a nullity, and consequently the transition to its Other, to the Necessary, is already expressed in that existence itself. It is an instance of the same thing as we have in abstract identity, which is a simple reference to self; it is known as a possibility, and being a possibility it is recognised that it is not yet anything. The fact that something is possible does not really imply anything. Identity is characterised as sterility, and that is what it really is.
What is wanting in this characteristic finds its complement, as we have seen, in the characteristic which is its antithesis. Necessity is not abstract, but truly absolute, solely in virtue of the fact that it contains the connection with an Other in itself, that it is self-differentiation, but a differentiation which has disappeared in something higher and is ideal. It consequently contains what belongs to necessity in general, but it is distinguished from this latter as being external and finite, and as involving a connection having reference to something else which remains Being and has the value of Being, and so is merely dependence. It goes by the name of necessity too, inasmuch as mediation is in general essential to necessity. The connection of its Other with something else, which is what constitutes it, does not get support from the ends for which it exists. Absolute necessity, on the other hand, transforms any such relation to an Other into a relation to itself, and consequently produces what is really inner harmony with itself.
Spirit rises above contingency and external necessity, just because these thoughts are in themselves insufficient and unsatisfying. It finds satisfaction in the thought of absolute necessity, because this latter represents something at peace with itself. Its result as result, however, is — it is so, it is simply necessary. Thus all aspiration, all effort, all longing after an Other, have passed away, for in it the Other has disappeared, there is no finitude in it, it is absolutely complete in itself, it is infinite and present in itself, there is nothing outside of it. It has in it no limit, for its nature is to be with itself, or at home with itself. It is not the act of rising to this necessity on the part of Spirit which in itself produces satisfaction. The satisfaction has reference to the goal Spirit tries to reach, and the satisfaction is in proportion to its ability to reach this goal.
If we pause for a moment to consider this subjective satisfaction, we find that it reminds us of what the Greeks found in the idea of subjection to necessity. That Man should yield to inevitable destiny was the advice of the wise, and this was in particular the truth expressed by the tragic chorus, and we admire the repose of their heroes and the calmness with which they freely and undauntedly accept the lot which destiny has assigned to them. This necessity, and the aims of their own wills which are annihilated by it, the compulsory force of this destiny and freedom, appear as the opposing elements, and seem to leave no room for reconciliation nor for any kind of satisfaction. In fact the play of this antique necessity is shrouded in a sadness which is neither driven away by defiance nor disfigured by any feeling of bitterness, and all lamentation is rather suppressed by silence than stilled by the healing of the wounded heart. The element of satisfaction found by Spirit in the thought of necessity is to be sought for in this alone, that Spirit simply abides by that abstract result of necessity expressed in the words, “it is so,” a result brought about by Spirit within itself. In this pure is there is no longer any content; all ends, all interests, all wishes, even the concrete feeling of life itself, have disappeared and vanished in it. Spirit produces this abstract result in itself just because it has given up this particular content of its will, the very substance of its life, and has renounced everything. It thus transforms into freedom the compulsion exercised upon it by fatality. For this force or compulsion can lay hold of it only by seizing on those sides of its nature which in its concrete existence have an inner and an outer determinate Being. As connected with external existence, Man is under the influence of external force in the shape of other men, of circumstances, and so on; but external existence has its roots in what is inward, in his impulses, interests, and aims; they are the bonds, morally justifiable and morally ordained, or, it may be, not justifiable, which bring him into subjection to force. But the roots belong to his inner life, they are his; he can tear them out of his heart; his will, his freedom represent that power of abstraction from everything whereby the heart can make itself the grave of the heart. When the heart thus inwardly renounces itself, it leaves to force nothing upon which it can lay hold. What is crushed by force is a form of existence which is devoid of heart, an externality in which force can no longer affect Man: he is outside of the sphere in which force can strike.
It has been previously remarked that the result, it is so, is the result of the necessity, to which Man clings; and he abides by it as a result, that is, in the sense that it is he who produces this abstract Being. This is the other moment of necessity, mediation through the negation of otherness. This Other is the determinate in general, which we have seen in the form of inner existence, the giving up of concrete aims and interests; for they are not only the ties which bind Man to externality, and consequently bring him into subjection to it, but they themselves represent the particular element, and are external to what is most inward, the self-thinking pure universality, the pure relation of freedom to itself. It is the strength of this freedom that it can in this abstract way comprise within itself and put within itself that particular element which is outside of itself, and can thus make it into something external in which it can no longer be disturbed. The reason why we men are unhappy, or unsatisfied, or simply fretful, is because of the division within us, that is, because of the contradiction represented by the fact that these impulses, aims, and interests, or simply these demands, wishes, and reflections are in us, and that at the same time our existence has in it what is the Other, the antithesis of these. This disunion or unrest in us can be removed in a twofold manner. On the one hand, our outward existence, our condition, the circumstances which affect us and in which our interests in general are involved, may be brought into harmony with the roots of their interests in ourselves, a harmony which is experienced in the form of happiness and satisfaction. On the other hand, in the event of there being a disunion between the two, and consequently in the event of unhappiness, instead of satisfaction there is a natural repose of the heart, or, where the injury goes deeper and affects an energetic will and its just claims, the heroic strength of the will produces at the same time a contentment by taking kindly to the actual state of things and by submitting to what actually is, and this is a yielding in which the mind does not in a one-sided way let go its hold on what is external, circumstances, or the actual condition of things, because they have been overcome and are overpowered, but which gives up by an act of its own will its inner determinateness and allows it to go. This freedom of abstraction is not without an element of pain; but the pain is brought down to the level of natural pain, and has not in it the pain of penitence, the pain attaching to the rebellious sense of wrong-doing, just as it has no consolation or hope. But then it is not in need of consolation, for consolation presupposes a claim which is still maintained and asserted and does not in one way really satisfy, while looked at in another way, it seeks a compensation, and in the act of hoping, a desire for something has been kept in reserve.
But it is just here that we find that moment of sadness already referred to, and which diffuses itself over this act, whereby necessity is transfigured and becomes freedom. The freedom here is the result of mediation through the negation of things finite. As abstract Being, the satisfaction gained is empty reference to self, the inner unsubstantial solitude of self-consciousness.
This defect lies in the determinate character of the result as well as of the starting-point. It is the same in both of these, that is to say, it is just the indeterminateness of Being. The same defect which has been noted as present in the form taken by the process of necessity, as this process exists in the region of the volition of subjective Spirit, will be found, too, in the process when it is an objective content for the thinking consciousness. The defect, however, does not lie in the nature of the process itself; and we have now to consider that process in the theoretical form, which is the point we have specially to deal with.
THE GENERAL FORM of the process has been already referred to as consisting of a mediation with self which contains the moment of mediation in such a way that the Other is posited as something negated or ideal. This process has likewise been described, so far as its more definite moments are concerned, as it presents itself in the form of Man’s elevation to God by the path of religion. We have now to compare the explanation given of the act whereby Spirit raises itself to God with that to be found in the formal expression which is called a proof.
The difference between them seems slight, but it is important, and supplies the reason why proof of this kind has been represented as inadequate and has generally been abandoned. Because what is material is contingent, therefore there exists an absolutely necessary Essence; this is the simple fashion in which the connection of ideas is put. Since mention is here made of an Essence, and since we have spoken only of absolute necessity, this necessity may certainly be hypostatised in this way; but the Essence is still indeterminate, and is not a subject or anything living, and still less is it Spirit. We shall, however, afterwards discuss the Essence as such in so far as it contains a determinate quality which has any interest in the present connection.
What is of primary importance is the relation indicated in the proposition: because the One, the contingent, exists, is, therefore the Other, the Absolutely-necessary, is, or exists. Here there are two forms of Being in connection, one form of Being connected with another form of
Being, a connection which we have seen in the shape of external necessity. It is, however, this very external necessity which is recognised to be a form of dependence in which the result depends on the starting-point, but which, in fact, by sinking to a state of contingency, is recognised to be unsatisfying. It is against it, accordingly, that the protests have been directed which have been advanced against this method of proof.
It contains, that is to say, the relation according to which the one characteristic, that of absolutely necessary Being, is mediated by the Other, by means of the characteristic of contingent Being, whereby the former is put in a dependent relation, in the relation, in fact, of what is conditioned to its condition. This was the main objection which, speaking generally, Jacobi brought against the knowledge of God, namely, that to know or to comprehend means merely “to deduce anything from its more immediate causes, or to look at its immediate conditions as a series” (Letters on the Doctrine of Spinoza, ); “to comprehend the Unconditioned therefore means to make it into something conditioned or to make it an effect.” The latter category, however, according to which the Absolutely-necessary is taken as an effect, can be at once discounted, since the relation it implies is in too direct contradiction to the characteristic with which we are dealing, namely, the Absolutely-necessary. The relation of the condition, which is also that of the ground, is, however, of a more outward character, and can more easily find favour. In any case it is present in the proposition: because the contingent exists, therefore the Absolutely-necessary exists.
While it must be granted that this defect exists, it is, on the other hand, to be observed that no objective significance is given to a relation like this implying conditionateness and dependence. This relation is present only in an absolutely subjective sense. The proposition does not state, and is not meant to state, that the Absolutely-necessary has conditions, and is in fact conditioned by the contingent world — quite the contrary. The entire development of the connection is seen only in the act of proof. It is only our knowledge of the Absolutely-necessary which is conditioned by that starting-point. The Absolutely-necessary does not exist in virtue of the fact that it raises itself out of the world of contingency, and requires this world as its starting-point and presupposition, in order that by starting from it it may thus first reach its Being. It cannot be the Absolutely-necessary, it cannot be God who has to be thought of thus as something mediated by an Other, as something dependent and conditioned. It is the content of the proof itself which corrects the defect which is visible only in its form. We are thus in presence of a distinction and a difference between the form and the nature of the content, and the form is more certainly seen to contain the defective element, from the very fact that the content is the Absolutely-necessary. This content is not itself devoid of form, as was evident from the nature of its determination. Its own form as being the form of the True is itself true, and the form which differs from it is for that reason the Untrue.
If we take what we have in general designated Form, in its more concrete signification, namely, as knowledge, we find ourselves amongst the well-known and favourite categories of finite knowledge, which as being subjective is defined generally as finite, while the course followed by the movement of knowledge belonging to it is defined as a finite act. Here accordingly the same element of inadequacy appears only in another shape. Knowledge is a finite act, and any such act cannot involve the comprehension of the Absolutely-necessary, of the Infinite. Knowledge demands, in short, that it should have the content in itself and should follow it. The knowledge which has an absolutely necessary, infinite content must itself be absolutely necessary and infinite. We thus find ourselves in the best position for wrestling once more with the antithesis whose affirmative and subsidiary help given by what was more of the nature of immediate knowledge, faith, feeling, and such like, we dealt with in the first Lectures. We must for the present leave the Form in this shape alone, but later on we shall have some reflections to make on the categories belonging to it. We have in the meantime to deal with the Form in the more definite shape in which it appears in the proof which forms the subject of discussion.
If we call to mind the formal syllogism previously dealt with, it will be seen that one part of the first proposition, the major proposition that is, runs thus — If the contingent exists; and this is expressed in a more direct way in the other proposition — There is a contingent world. While in the former of these propositions the characteristic of contingency is posited essentially in its connection with the Absolutely-necessary, it is nevertheless stated to be at the same time something contingent which has Being. It is in the second proposition, or in this characteristic of the existent as it appears in the first, that the defect lies, and this in fact means that it is directly self-contradictory, and shows itself to be in its very nature an untrue one-sidedness. The contingent, the finite is expressed in terms of what has Being; but it is, on the contrary, characteristic of the finite that it should have an end and drop away, that it should be a kind of Being which has the value of what is merely a possibility and which may either be or not be.
This fundamental error is found in the form of the connection, which is that of an ordinary syllogism. A syllogism of this kind has a permanent immediate element in its premisses, it is based on presuppositions which are stated to be not only what is primary, but to be the permanent primary existent element with which the Other is in general so closely connected as some kind of consequence, something conditioned, and so on, that the two characteristics thus linked together constitute a relation which is external and finite, in which each of the two sides is in a relation of reference to the other. It constitutes one of the characteristics of these two sides, but it has at the same time a substantial existence of its own outside of the relation between them. The characteristic which the two different elements taken together constitute, and which is in itself simply one, is the Absolutely-necessary. Its name at once declares it to be the Only-one, what truly is, the only reality. We have seen how its notion is the mediation which returns into itself, the mediation which is merely a mediation with itself by means of the Other which is distinguished from it, and which is taken up into the One, the Absolutely-necessary, negated as something having Being, and preserved merely as something ideal. Outside of this absolute, inherent unity, however, the two sides of the relation are in this kind of syllogism kept also externally apart from each other as things which have Being; the contingent is. This proposition is inherently self-contradictory, and is likewise in contradiction with the result, the absolute necessity, which is not merely placed on one side, but, on the contrary, is the whole of Being.
If therefore we begin with the contingent, we must not set out from it as if it were something which is to remain fixed in such a way that it continues to be in the further development of the argument something which has Being. This is its one-sided determinateness. On the contrary, it is to be posited with its completely determinate character, which implies that non-Being may quite as well be attributed to it, and that it consequently enters into the result as something which passes away. Not because the contingent is, but, on the contrary, because it is non-Being, merely phenomenal, because its Being is not true reality, the absolute necessity is. This latter is its Being and Truth.
This moment of the Negative is not found in the form taken by the syllogism of the Understanding, and this is why it is defective when it appears in this region which is that of the living reason of Spirit, in the region, that is, in which absolute necessity itself is considered as the true result, as something which does indeed mediate itself through an Other, but mediates itself with itself by absorbing this Other. Thus the course followed by that knowledge of necessity is different from the process which necessity is. Such a course is therefore not to be considered as simply necessary true movement, but rather as finite activity. It is not infinite knowledge, it has not the infinite for its content and for the basis of its activity, for the infinite appears only as this mediation with self through the negation of the negative.
The defect which has been pointed out as existing in this form of the process of reasoning, means, as has been indicated, that the elevation of Spirit to God has not been correctly explained in that proof of the existence of God which it constitutes. If we compare the two we see that this act of elevation is undoubtedly also an act whereby Spirit goes beyond worldly existence, as well as beyond what is merely temporal, changeable, and transitory. The world-element, it is true, is declared to be actual existence, and we start from it; but since, as was remarked, it is defined as the temporal, the contingent, the changeable and transitory, its Being is not satisfying for truth, it is not the truly affirmative, it is defined as what annuls and negates itself. It does not persistently retain its characteristic, to be; on the contrary, a Being is attributed to it which has no more value than non-Being whose characteristic contains in itself its non-Being, its Other, and consequently its contradiction, its disintegration and dissolution. But even if it seem to be the case, or may even actually be the case, that so far as faith is concerned this contingent Being as something present to consciousness remains standing on one side confronting the other side, the Eternal, the Necessary in-and-for-itself, in the form of a world above which is heaven, still the real point is not the fact that a double world has been actually conceived of, but the value which is to be attached to such a conception. This value is expressed when it is said that the one world is the world of appearance or illusion, and the other the world of truth. When the former is abandoned, and we pass over to the other only in the sense that the world of appearance still remains present here, the connection between them as it presents itself to the religious man does not mean that that world is anything more than merely the point of departure, or that it is permanently fixed as a ground or basis to which Being, or the power of acting as a basis or condition, could be attributed. Satisfaction, everything in the way of a foundation or first principle is, on the contrary, found to exist in the eternal world as something which is independent in-and-for-itself. As opposed to this, in the form taken by the syllogism, the Being of both is expressed in a similar way — both in the one proposition of the connection: If a contingent world exists, an Absolutely-necessary exists too; as also in the other in which it is stated as a presupposition that a contingent world does exist; and further, in the third and concluding proposition: Therefore an Absolutely-necessary exists.
A few remarks may be further added regarding these propositions thus definitely expressed. And first of all in connection with the last of them, the way in which the two contrasted characteristics are linked together, must at once strike us: Therefore the Absolutely-necessary exists. Therefore expresses mediation through an Other, and yet it is immediacy, and directly absorbs the former of these characteristics, which, as has been indicated, is just what supplies the reason why such knowledge regarding whatever is its object is declared to be inadmissible. The abolition of mediation through an Other exists, however, potentially only. The syllogism, on the other hand, as exhibited in detail, gives full expression to this. Truth is a force of such a character that it is present even in what is false, and it only requires correct observation and attention in order to discover the True in the False itself, or rather actually to see it there. The True is here mediation with self by the negation of the Other and of the mediation through the Other. The negation, both of mediation through an Other, as well as of the abstract immediacy which is devoid of mediation, is present in the “therefore” above referred to.
Further, if the one proposition is: The contingent is, and the other: The necessary in-and-for-itself is, this essentially suggests that the Being of the contingent has an absolutely different value from necessary Being in-and-for-itself. Still Being is what is common to both, and it is the one characteristic in both propositions. In accordance with this the transition does not take the form of a passing from one form of Being to another, but from one characteristic of thought to another. Being purifies itself from the predicate of contingency, which is inadequate to express its nature. Being is simple self-identity or equality with self. Contingency, on the other hand, is Being which is absolutely unlike itself, which contradicts itself, and it is only in the Absolutely-necessary that it is once more restored to this condition of self-identity. It is accordingly here that the course thus followed by the act of elevation to God, or this aspect of the act of proof, differs more definitely from the others referred to, in this, namely, that in the former of the two methods of procedure the characteristic which has to be proved, or is supposed to result from the proof, is not Being. Being is rather what the two aspects have permanently in common and which is continued from the one into the other. In the other method of procedure, on the contrary, the transition has to be made from the notion or conception of God to His Being. This transition seems more difficult than that from a determinateness of content in general, what we are accustomed to call a notion or conception, to another conception, and to what is more homogeneous, therefore, than the transition from the notion to Being is apt to appear.
The idea which lies at the basis of this is that Being is not itself a conception or thought. The proper place to consider it, in this antithesis in which it is exhibited as independent and isolated, will be when we come to deal with the proof referred to. Here, however, we have not, to begin with, to take it abstractly and independently. The fact that it is the element common to the two characteristics, the contingent and the Absolutely-necessary, suggests a comparison and an external separation between it and them, while at first it is in inseparable union with each, with contingent Being and absolutely necessary Being. In this way we shall once more take up the form of the proof already referred to, and bring out still more definitely the difference in the contradiction which it undergoes, regarded from the two opposite sides, the philosophical side, and that of the abstract understanding.
The proposition indicated expresses the following connection —
Because contingent Being exists, therefore absolutely necessary Being exists.
If we take this connection in its simple sense without characterising it more definitely by means of the category of a ground, or reason, or the like, its meaning is merely this —
Contingent Being is at the same time the Being of an Other, that of the absolutely necessary Being.
This phrase “at the same time” seems to imply a contradiction, over against which the two contrasted propositions are placed as solutions, of which the one is —
The Being of the contingent is not its own Being, but merely the Being of an Other, and in a definite sense it is the Being of its own Other, the Absolutely-necessary. And the other —
The Being of the contingent is merely its own Being, and is not the Being of an Other, of the Absolutely-necessary.
It has been shown that the first of these propositions has the true meaning, which was also the meaning expressed by the idea contained in the transition. We shall take up further on the speculative or philosophical connection which is itself immanent in those determinations of thought which constitute contingency.
The other proposition, however, is the proposition of the Understanding in which thinkers of modern times have so firmly intrenched themselves. What can be more reasonable than to hold that anything, any form of existence, and so, too, the contingent, since it is, is its own Being, is in fact just the definite Being which it is, and not rather an other kind of Being! The contingent is in this way retained on its own account separately from the Absolutely-necessary.
It is still easier to employ the characteristics finite and Infinite in order to express these two characteristics above mentioned, and thus to take the finite for itself, as isolated from its other, the Infinite. There is therefore, it is said, no bridge, no passage from finite Being to infinite Being. The finite is related only to itself, and not to its Other. The distinction which was made between knowledge as form and knowledge as content, is an empty one. This very difference between the two was rightly made the basis of syllogisms, syllogisms which start with the hypothesis that knowledge is finite, and for this reason conclude that this knowledge cannot know the Infinite because it has not the power of comprehending it. Conversely it is concluded that if knowledge did comprehend the Infinite it would necessarily be infinite itself; but it is admittedly not infinite, therefore it has not the power of knowing the Infinite. Its action is defined just as its content is. Finite knowledge and infinite knowledge yield the same kind of relation as is yielded by the finite and the Infinite in general. The only difference is that infinite knowledge is in a relation of stronger repulsion towards its opposite than the naked Infinite, and points more directly to the separation of the two sides of the antithesis, so that one only remains, namely, finite knowledge. In this way all relation based on mediation disappears, every kind of relation, that is, in which the finite and the Infinite as such, and so, too, the contingent and the Absolutely-necessary, might have stood to each other. The form of finite and Infinite is the one which has come to be most in vogue in connection with this way of looking at the question. That form is more abstract, and accordingly seems more comprehensive, than the first-mentioned.
The finite in general and finite knowledge have thus necessity directly ascribed to them over and above contingency. This necessity takes the form of continuous advance in the series of causes and effects, conditions and things conditioned, and was formerly described as external necessity, and was included in the finite as forming a part of it. It can be understood, indeed, only in reference to knowledge, but when included in the finite it is put in contrast with the Infinite without risk of the misapprehension which might arise through the employment of the category of the Absolutely-necessary.
If, accordingly, we keep to this expression, then the relation of finitude and infinitude at which we stop short will be that of their absence of relation, their absence of reference. We have reached the position that the finite as a whole and finite knowledge are incapable of grasping the Infinite in general, as well as the Infinite in the form it takes as absolute necessity, and also of comprehending the Infinite by the aid of the conceptions of contingency and finitude from which finite knowledge starts. Finite knowledge is accordingly finite just because it is based on finite conceptions; and the finite, including also finite knowledge, stands in relation to itself only, does not go beyond itself, because it is its own Being, and not in any sense the Being of an Other, and, least of all, the Being of its own Other. This is the proposition upon which so much reliance is placed. It supplies no way of passing from the finite to the Infinite, nor from the contingent to the Absolutely-necessary, nor from effects to an absolutely first non-finite cause. A gulf is simply fixed between them.
THIS DOGMATIC VIEW of the absolute separation between the finite and the Infinite has to do with Logic. It involves an opinion regarding the nature of the conceptions of the finite and the Infinite which is treated of in Logic. Here we shall confine ourselves chiefly to those characteristics which we have partly dealt with in the preceding Lectures, but which are also found in our own consciousness. The characteristics which belong to the nature of the conceptions themselves, and which have been exhibited in the Logic in their own pure determinateness and in that of their connection, must show themselves and be present in our ordinary consciousness as well.
When, therefore, it is said that the Being of the finite is only its own Being, and is in no sense the Being of an Other, it is thereby declared that there is no possible way of passing from the finite to the Infinite, and therefore no mediation between them, neither in themselves nor in and for knowledge, so that, although the finite is mediated through the Infinite, still the converse is not true, which is just the real point of interest. Appeal is thus already made to the fact that the Spirit of Man rises out of the contingent, the temporal, the finite, to God as representing the Absolutely-necessary, the Eternal, the Infinite, to the fact that the so-called gulf does not exist for Spirit, and that it really accomplishes the transition, and that the heart of Man, spite of the Understanding which asserts the existence of this absolute separation, will not admit that there is any such gulf, but, on the contrary, actually makes the transition from the finite to the Infinite in the act of rising to God.
The ready reply to this, however, is that if you grant the fact of this rising to God, there is certainly an act of transition on the part of Spirit, but not of Spirit in itself, not a transition in the conceptions, or indeed in any sense of the conceptions themselves; and the reason of this just is that in the conception as here understood, the Being of the finite is its own Being and not the Being of an Other. When we thus regard finite Being as standing in relation to itself only, it is merely for itself, and is not Being for an Other. It is consequently taken out of the region of change, is unchangeable and absolute. This is how the matter stands with these so-called conceptions. Those, however, who assert the impossibility of any such transition will not admit that the finite is absolute, unchangeable, imperishable, and eternal. If the error involved in taking the finite as absolute were merely an error of the Schools, an illogical result the blame of which is to be put on the Understanding; if it were to be regarded, in fact, as belonging to those abstractions of an extreme kind with which we have got to do here, then we might very well ask if an error of this sort really mattered much since we might certainly regard these abstractions as of no account compared with the fulness of spiritual life found in religion, which, moreover, constitutes the great and really living interest of Spirit. But that it is exclusively the finite which constitutes the true interest amongst these so-called great and living interests, is only too evident from the attention paid to religion itself, in connection with which, and as a consequence of the fundamental principle referred to an amount of study has been bestowed on the history of the finite materials of the subject, on the history of external events and opinions far beyond that given to the infinite element, which has been confessedly reduced to a minimum. It is by the employment of thoughts and of these abstract categories of finite and Infinite that the renunciation of the knowledge of truth is supposed to be justified, and as a matter of fact it is in the region of pure thought that all these interests of Spirit have free play, in order that they may there have their real nature decided, for thoughts constitute the really inner substantiality of the concrete reality of Spirit.
But suppose we leave this conception of the Understanding, and its assertion that the Being of the finite is only its own Being, and not the Being of an Other, not transition itself, and take up the further idea which emphasises the element of knowledge. If it is agreed that Spirit does actually make this transition, then the fact of this transition is not a fact of knowledge, but of Spirit in general, and in a definite sense of faith. It has been sufficiently proved that this act of elevation to God, whether seen in feeling or in faith, or however you choose to define the mode of its spiritual existence, takes place in the inmost part of Spirit, in the region of thought. Religion as representing what concerns the innermost part of Man’s nature has its centre and the root of its movement in thought. God in His Essence is thought, the act of thought itself, just as the ordinary representation of Him and the shape given to Him in the mind, as well as the form and mode in which religion appears, are defined as feeling, intuition, faith, and so on. Knowledge, however, does nothing beyond bringing this inward element into consciousness on its own account, beyond forming a conception of that pulsation of thought in terms of thought. In this, knowledge may appear one-sided, and it may appear all the more as if feeling, intuition, and faith essentially belonged to religion, and were more closely connected with God than His thinking notion and His notion as expressed in thought; but this inner element is present here, and thought just consists in getting a knowledge of it, and rational knowledge in general just means that we know a thing in its essential determinateness.
To have rational knowledge or cognition, to comprehend or grasp in thought, are terms which, like “immediate” and “faith,” belong to present-day culture. They have the authority of a preconceived idea which has a twofold character. On the one hand, there is the fact that they are absolutely familiar, and are consequently final categories regarding whose signification and verification there is no need to inquire further. On the other hand, there is the fact that the inability of reason to comprehend and know the True and the Infinite is something settled quite as much as their general meaning is. The words, to know or cognise, to comprehend or grasp in thought, have the value of a magical formula. It never occurs to those under the influence of this preconceived idea to ask what the expressions to know, to grasp in thought, mean, or to get a clear idea of them, and yet that would be the sole and only point of importance if we were to say something that was really pertinent regarding the main question. In any such investigation it would be evident of itself that knowledge merely expresses the fact of the transition which Spirit itself makes, and in so far as knowledge is true knowledge or comprehension it is a consciousness of the necessity which is contained in the transition itself, and is nothing save the act of forming a conception of this characteristic which is immanent and present in it.
But if, so far as the fact of the transition from the finite to the Infinite is concerned, it is replied that this transition takes place in the spirit, or in faith, feeling, and the like, such an answer would not be the whole answer, which rather essentially takes the following form. Religious belief, or feeling, inner revelation, means that we have an immediate knowledge of God which is not reached by mediation. It means that the transition does not consist of an essential connection between the two sides, but is made in the form of a leap from one to the other. What we would call a transition is broken up in this way into two separate acts which are outwardly opposed, and follow each other in succession of time only, and are related to each other by being compared or recalled. The finite and the Infinite simply keep in this condition of separation, and this being presupposed, Spirit occupies itself with the finite in a particular way; and in occupying itself with the Infinite in the way of feeling, faith, knowledge, it performs a separate, immediate and simple action — not an act of transition. Just as the finite and the Infinite are without relation to each other, so, too, the acts of Spirit by which it fills itself with these characteristics, and fills itself either with the one or the other, have no relation to each other. Even if they happen to exist contemporaneously, so that the finite is found in consciousness along with the Infinite, they are merely mixed together. They are two independent forms of activity which do not enter into any relation of mediation with each other.
The repetition which is involved in this conception of the ordinary division of the finite and the Infinite has already been referred to — that separation by which the finite is put on one side in an independent form, and the Infinite on the other in contrast with it, while the former is not the less asserted in this way to be absolute. This is the dualism which, put in a more definite form, is Manicheism. But even those who maintain the existence of such a relation will not admit that the finite is absolute, and yet they cannot escape the conclusion which does not merely flow from the statement referred to, but is just this very statement itself, that the finite has no connection with the Infinite, that there is no possible way of passing from the one to the other, but that the one is absolutely distinct from the other. But even if a relation is conceived of as actually existing, it is, owing to the admitted incompatibility between them, a relation of a merely negative kind. The Infinite is thought of as the True and the only Affirmative, that is, the abstract Affirmative, so that its relation to the finite is that of a force in which the finite is annihilated. The finite, in order to be, must keep out of the way of the Infinite, must flee from it. If it comes into contact with it, it can only perish. As regards the subjective existence of these characteristics with which we are dealing, as represented, namely, by finite and infinite knowledge, we find that the one side, that of infinitude, is the immediate knowledge of Man by God. The entire other side, again, is Man in general; it is he who is the finite about which we are chiefly concerned, and it is just this knowledge of God on his part, whether it is called immediate or not, which is his Being, his finite knowledge, and the transition from it to the Infinite. If, accordingly, the manner in which Spirit deals with the finite, and that in which it deals with the Infinite, are supposed to represent two different forms of activity, then the latter form of activity as representing the elevation of Spirit to God would not be the immanent transition referred to; and when Spirit occupied itself with the finite it would in turn do this in an absolute way, and be entirely confined to the finite as such. This point would allow of being dealt with at great length, but it may be sufficient here to remember that, although the finite is the object and the end dealt with by this side, it can occupy itself with it in a true way, whether in the form of cognition, knowledge, opinion, or in a practical and moral fashion, only in so far as the finite is not taken for itself, but is known, recognised, and its existence affirmed in connection with the relation in which it stands to the Infinite, to the Infinite in it, in so far, in fact, as it is an object and an end in connection with this latter category. It is well enough known what place is given to the religious element both in the case of individuals and even in religions themselves, and how this religious element in the form of devotion, contrition of heart and spirit, and the giving of offerings, comes to be regarded as a matter apart with which we can occupy ourselves and then have done with; while the secular life, the sphere of finitude, exists alongside of it, and gives itself up to the pursuit of its own ends, and is left to its own interests without any influence being exercised upon it by the Infinite, the Eternal, and the True — that is, without there being any passing over into the Infinite within the sphere of the finite, without the finite coming to truth and morality by the mediation of the Infinite, and so, too, without the Infinite being brought into the region of present reality through the mediation of the finite. We do not require here to enter upon the consideration of the lame conclusion that the one who has knowledge, namely, Man, must be absolute in order to comprehend the Absolute, because the same thing applies to faith or immediate knowledge as being also an inner act of comprehension, if not of the absolute Spirit of God, at all events of the Infinite. If this knowledge is so afraid of the concrete element in its object, then this object must at least have some meaning for it. It is really the non-concrete which has few characteristics or none at all, that is the abstract, the negative, what is least of all, the Infinite in short.
But then it is just by means of this miserable abstraction of the Infinite that ordinary thought repels the attempt to comprehend the Infinite, and for the simple reason that the present and actual Man, the human spirit, human reason, is definitely opposed to the Infinite in the form of a fixed abstraction of the finite. Ordinary thought would more readily allow that the human spirit, thought, or reason, can comprehend the Absolutely-necessary, for this latter is thus directly declared and stated to be the negative as opposed to its Other, namely, the contingent, which has on its part a necessity too, external necessity that is. What accordingly can be clearer than that Man, who moreover is, that is to say, is something positive or affirmative, cannot comprehend his negative? And conversely, is it not still more clear that since his Being, his affirmation, is finitude, and therefore negation. it cannot comprehend infinitude, which, as opposed to finitude, is equally negation but in the reverse way, since it is Being, affirmation in contrast with the characteristic attached to finitude? What then can be clearer than that finitude comes to Man from both sides? He can comprehend a few feet of space, yet outside of this volume there lies the infinitude of space. He possesses a span of infinite time, which in the same way shrinks up into a moment as compared with this infinite time, just as his volume of space shrinks up into a point. But considered apart from this outward finitude which characterises him in contrast with those infinite externalities, he is intelligence, is able to perceive, to form ideas, to know, to have cognition of things. The object on which he exercises his intelligence is the world, this aggregate of infinite particular things. How small is the number of these known by individual men — it is not Man who knows but the individual — as compared with the infinite mass which actually exists. In order clearly to realise the paltry nature of human knowledge, we have only to remember a fact which cannot be denied, and which we are accustomed to describe as divine Omniscience, and to put it in the fashion in which it is expressed by the organist in L , in a funeral sermon reported in “The Courses of Life on Ascending Lines” (Part II., Supplement B.) — to mention once more a work marked by humour of the highest kind: “Neighbour Brise was speaking to me yesterday about the greatness of the good God, and the idea came into my head that the good God knew how to name every sparrow, every goldfinch, every wren, every mite, every midge, just as you call the people in the village, Schmied’s Gregory, Briefen’s Peter, Heifried’s Hans. Just think how the good God can call to every one of these midges which are so like each other that you would swear they were all sisters and brothers — just think of it!” But as compared with practical finitude the theoretical element at least appears great and wide; and yet how thoroughly we realise what human limitation is, when these aims, and plans, and wishes, and all that so long as it is in the mind has no limits, are brought into contact with the reality for which they are intended. All that wide extent of practical imagination, all that endeavour, that aspiration, reveals its narrowness by the very fact that it is only endeavour, only aspiration. It is this finitude with which the attempt to form a conception of the Infinite, to comprehend it, is confronted. The critical Understanding which holds by this principle, supposed to be so convincing, has really not got beyond the stage of culture occupied by that organist in L , has in fact not even attained to it. The organist used the pictorial idea referred to in the simplicity of his heart, in order to bring the idea of the greatness of God’s love before a peasant community. The critical Understanding, on the other hand, employs finite things in order to bring objection against God’s love and God’s greatness, that is to say, against God’s presence in the human spirit. This Understanding keeps firmly in its mind the midge of finitude, that proposition already considered — the finite is, a proposition the falseness of which is directly evident, for the finite is something the essential character and nature of which consist just in this that it passes away, that it is not, so that it is impossible to think of the finite or form an idea of it apart from the determination of Not-Being, which is involved in the thought of what is transient. Who has got the length of saying, the finite passes away? If the idea of Now is inserted between the finite and its passing away, and if in this way a kind of permanence is supposed to be given to Being— “the finite passes away, but it is now” — then this Now itself is something which not only passes away, but has itself actually passed away, since it is. The very fact that I have this consciousness of the Now, and have put it into words, shows that it is no longer Now, but something different. It lasts, it is true, but not as this particular Now, and Now can only mean this actual Now, in this particular moment, something without length, a mere point. It continues, in fact, only as being the negation of this particular Now, as the negation of the finite, and consequently as the Infinite, the Universal. The Universal is already infinite. That respect for the Infinite which keeps the Understanding from finding the Infinite in every Universal ought to be called a silly respect. The Infinite is lofty and majestic, but to place its grandeur and majesty in that countless swarm of midges, and to find the infinitude of knowledge in the knowledge of those countless midges, that is, of the individual midges, is a proof of the impotence, not of faith, of Spirit, or of reason, but of the Understanding to conceive of the finite as a nullity, and of its Being as something which has equally the value and signification which belong to Not-Being.
Spirit is immortal; it is eternal; and it is immortal and eternal in virtue of the fact that it is infinite, that it has no such spatial finitude as we associate with the body when we speak of it being five feet in height, two feet in breadth and thickness, that it is not the Now of time, that the content of its knowledge does not consist of these countless midges, that its volition and freedom have not to do with the infinite mass of existing obstacles, nor of the aims and activities which such resisting obstacles and hindrances have to encounter. The infinitude of Spirit is its inwardness, in an abstract sense its pure inwardness, and this is its thought, and this abstract thought is a real, present infinitude, while its concrete inwardness consists in the fact that this thought is Spirit.
Thus, after starting with the absolute separation of the two sides, we have come back to their connection, and it makes no difference whether this connection is represented as existing in the subjective or objective sphere. The only question is as to whether it has been correctly conceived of. In so far as it is represented as merely subjective, as a proof only for us, it is of course granted that it is not objective and has not been correctly conceived of in-and-for-itself. But, then, what is incorrect in it is not to be looked for in the fact that there is no such connection at all, that is to say, that there is no such thing as the elevation of Spirit to God.
The real point, therefore, would be the consideration of this connection in its determinateness. The consideration of it in this way is a matter at once of the deepest and most elevated kind, and just because of this it is the most difficult of tasks. You cannot carry it on by means of finite categories; that is, the modes of thought which we employ in ordinary life and in dealing with contingent things, as well as those we are accustomed to in the sciences, don’t suffice for it. The latter have their foundation, their logic, in connections which belong to what is finite, such as cause and effect; their laws, their descriptive terms, their modes of arguing, are purely relations belonging to what is conditioned, and which lose their significance in the heights where the Infinite is. They must indeed be employed, but at the same time they have always to be referred back to their proper sphere and have their meaning rectified. The fact of the fellowship of God and Man with each other involves a fellowship of Spirit with Spirit. It involves the most important questions. It is a fellowship, and this very circumstance involves the difficulty of at once maintaining the fact of difference and of defining it in such a way as to preserve the fact of fellowship. That Man knows God implies, in accordance with the essential idea of communion or fellowship, that there is a community of knowledge; that is to say, Man knows God only in so far as God Himself knows Himself in Man. This knowledge is God’s self-consciousness, but it is at the same time a knowledge of God on the part of Man, and this knowledge of God by Man is a knowledge of Man by God. The Spirit of Man, whereby he knows God, is simply the Spirit of God Himself. It is at this stage that the questions regarding the freedom of Man, the union of his individual consciousness and knowledge with the knowledge which brings him into fellowship with God, and the knowledge of God in him, come to be discussed. This wealth of relationship which exists between the human spirit and God is not, however, our subject. We have to take up this relationship only in its most abstract aspect, that is to say, in the form of the connection of the finite with the Infinite. However strong the contrast between the poverty of this connection and the wealth of the content referred to may seem, still the logical relation is at the same time also the basis of the movement of that fulness of content.
THE CONNECTION BETWEEN these forms of thought referred to which constitutes the entire content of the Proof under discussion, has already been examined in the foregoing Lectures. That this connection does not correspond to the results supposed to be reached in the Proof, is a point to be thoroughly discussed afterwards. The peculiarly speculative aspect of the connection, however, still remains to be considered, and we have here to indicate, without entering upon this logical examination in detail, what characteristic of this connection has reference to this speculative aspect. The moment to which attention has mainly to be directed in reference to this connection, is the fact that it is a transition, that is to say, the point of departure has here the characteristic quality of something negative, has the character of contingent Being, of what is a phenomenon or an appearance only, which has its truth in the Absolutely-necessary, in the truly affirmative element in this latter. As regards, first of all, the former of these characteristics, the negative moment namely, if we are to get a philosophical grasp of it, all that is necessary is that it be not taken as representing mere Nothing. It does not exist in any such abstract form, but, on the contrary, is merely a moment in the contingency of the world. There ought accordingly to be no difficulty in not taking the negative as abstract Nothing. The popular idea of contingency, limitation, finitude, phenomenon, involves the idea of definite Being, of definite existence, but at the same time it substantially involves negation. Ordinary thought is more concrete and true than the Understanding which abstracts, and which when it hears of a negative too easily makes Nothing out of it, pure Nothing, Nothing as such, and gives up all thought of its being in any way connected with existence in so far as existence is defined as contingent, phenomenal, and so on. Reflective analysis points to the two moments which exist in a content of this kind — namely, an affirmative, definite Being, existence as one particular form of Being; but a moment also which involves the quality of finality, mortality, limits, and so on, in the form of negation. Thought, if it is to form a conception of the contingent, cannot allow these moments to be separated into a Nothing for itself and a Being for itself. For they do not exist in this form in the contingent; on the contrary, it comprises both in itself. They are therefore not to be taken as existing each by itself in connection with one another, nor is the contingent to be taken just as it is, as representing the connection between them. This then is the speculative determination. It remains true to the content of ordinary thought or conception, while, on the contrary, this content escapes abstract thought which asserts the independence of the two moments. It has resolved into its parts the contingent, which is the object of the Understanding.
The contingent accordingly, as thus defined, represents what is a contradiction in itself. What thus resolves itself becomes in consequence just exactly what it became in the hands of the Understanding. But resolution is of two sorts. The resolution effected by the Understanding results simply in the disappearance of the object, of the concrete union; while in the other kind of resolution the object is preserved. Still this preservation does not help it much, or not at all, for in being thus preserved it is defined as a contradiction, and contradiction dissolves itself; what contradicts itself is Nothing. However correct this may be, it is at the same time incorrect. Contradiction and Nothing are at all events distinct from one another. Contradiction is concrete, it at least has a content, it at least contains things which contradict themselves; it at least gives expression to them, it declares what it is a contradiction of: Nothing, on the contrary, does not express anything at all, it is devoid of content, it is the absolutely empty. This concrete quality of the one and the absolutely abstract quality of the other constitute a very important difference. Further, Nothing is in no sense contradiction. Nothing does not contradict itself, it is identical with itself; it accordingly fulfils perfectly the conditions of the logical proposition that a thing should not contradict itself — or if this proposition is expressed thus, Nothing ought to contradict itself, this is an ought which has no result, for Nothing does not do what it ought, that is, it does not contradict itself. If, however, it is put in the way of a thesis thus — Nothing which exists contradicts itself, then it is plainly correct, for the subject of this proposition is a Nothing which at the same time is, but Nothing itself as such is merely simple, the one characteristic which is equivalent to itself, which does not contradict itself.
Thus, the cancelling or solution of the contradiction in Nothing, as given by the Understanding, moves in vacuo, or, more accurately, in contradiction itself, which in virtue of a solution of this kind declares itself in fact to be still in existence, to be unsolved. The reason why the contradiction is still uncancelled is just that the content, the contingent, is first posited only in its negation in itself, and not yet in the affirmation which must be contained in this cancelling since it is not abstract Nothing. Even the contingent is certainly, to begin with, as it presents itself to the ordinary thought, an affirmative. It represents definite Being, existence; it is the world, affirmation, Reality, or however you like to term it, and it is this enough and to spare; but as such it is not yet posited in its solution, not given in the explication of its content and substance, and it is just this content which is meant to lead to its truth, namely, the Absolutely-necessary. It is the contingent itself in which, as was said, the finitude, the limitation of the world has been indicated in order that it may itself directly point to its solution, that is, in accordance with the negative side already indicated. And further, the analysis or resolution of this contingent which is posited as already resolved in the contradiction, is seen to be the affirmative which is contained in it. This resolution has been already referred to. It was got and adopted from the idea formed by the human mind as representing the transition of Spirit from the contingent to the Absolutely-necessary, which in accordance with this would itself be this very affirmative, the resolution of that first and merely negative resolution. So, too, to indicate the speculative element in this final and most inner point would simply mean to put in a completely connected form the thoughts which are already contained in the conception we are dealing with, namely, in that first resolution. The Understanding which conceived of it merely as contradiction which resolves itself into Nothing, takes up only one of the two moments contained in it, and leaves the other alone.
As a matter of fact the concrete result in its unfolded shape, that is, its speculative form, has been already brought under our notice, and that long ago, namely, in the definition which was given of absolute necessity. In that connection, however, an external kind of reflection and style of argument was employed in reference to the moments which belong to this necessity or from which it results. What we have got to do here is merely to call attention to those moments which are found in what we have seen to be the contradiction which is the resolution of the contingent. In absolute necessity what we found first of all was the moment of mediation, and, to begin with, of mediation through an Other. The analysis of the contingent directly shows that the moments of this mediation are Being in general, or material existence, and the negation of this, whereby it is degraded to the state of something which has a semblance of Being, something which is virtually a nullity. Each moment is not isolated and taken by itself, but is thought of as attaching to the one characteristic, namely, to the contingent, and as existing purely in relation to the Other, as having any meaning only in this relation. This one characteristic, which holds them together, is what mediates them. In it, it is true, the one exists by means of the other; but then each can exist for itself outside of their connection, and each ought, in fact, to exist for itself, Being for itself and negation for itself. If, however, we call the former Being as it appears in the more concrete shape in which we have it here, namely, as material existence, we practically grant that this material existence is not for itself, is not absolute or eternal, but is, on the contrary, virtually a nullity which has indeed a Being, but not an independent Being, a Being-for-self, for it is just this Being possessed by it which is characterised as something contingent. Since, accordingly, in the case of contingency each of the two characteristics exists only in relation to the other, this mediation between them appears to be contingent itself, to be merely isolated, and to be found only in this particular place. The unsatisfactory thing is that the characteristics can be taken for themselves, that is to say, as they themselves are as such, and as related only to themselves, and therefore immediately and thus as not mediated in themselves. Mediation is consequently something which happens to them in a merely outward way, and is itself contingent; that is, the peculiar inner necessity of contingency is not demonstrated.
This reflection consequently leads up to the necessity of the starting-point in itself which we took as something given, as a starting-point in fact. It leads up not to the transition from the contingent to the necessary, but to the transition which is implicitly contained in the contingent itself, to the transition from one of each of the moments which constitute the contingent, to its Other. This would bring us back to the analysis of the first abstract, logical moments, and it is sufficient here to regard contingency as the act of transition in itself, as its cancelling of itself or annulling of itself, as this is ordinarily conceived of.
In the resolution of contingency just described, there is at the same time indicated the second moment, that of absolute necessity, that is, the moment of mediation with self. The moments of contingency are, to begin with, in a relation of antithesis to each other, and each is posited as mediated by its antithesis or Other. In the unity of the two, however, each is something negated, and their difference is consequently done away with, and although we still speak of one of the two, it is no longer related to something different from it, but to itself; we have thus mediation with self.
The speculative way of looking at this accordingly implies that the contingent is known in itself in so far as it is resolved into its parts, and this resolution at first takes the form of an external analysis of this characteristic. It is, however, not merely this, but is really the resolution of that characteristic in itself. The contingent is by its very nature that which resolves itself, disintegrates itself, it is transition in itself. But, in the second place, this resolution is not the abstraction of Nothing, but is rather affirmation within the resolution, that affirmation which we call absolute necessity. It is thus that we form a philosophical conception of this transition. The result is shown to be immanent in the contingent, i.e., it is the very nature of the contingent to revert back to its truth, and the elevation of our spirit to God — in so far as we have provisionally no further definition of God than the description of Him as Absolute Being, or because we for the present rest satisfied with it — is the course of development followed by this movement of the Thing or true fact. It is this Thing or true fact in-and-for-itself which is the impelling power in us, and which gives the impulse to this movement.
It has been already remarked that for the consciousness to which the determinations of thought do not present themselves in this pure speculative form, and consequently not in their self-solution and self-movement, but which represents them to itself by general ideas, the transition is rendered more easy by the fact that the thing from which we start, namely, the contingent, already means something which resolves itself, which passes over into its Other. In this way the connection between that from which the start is made and the point ultimately reached, is made absolutely clear. This starting-point is consequently the one which is most advantageous for consciousness, and the one which is most in accordance with an end. It is the instinct of thought which implicitly makes this transition, which is the essential fact or Thing, but at the same time this instinct brings it into consciousness in the form of a determination of thought, of such a kind that it appears easy for it to represent it as a general idea merely, that is, in the form of abstract identity. When the world, in fact, is defined as the contingent, this means that reference is made to its Not-Being, while it is hinted that its truth is its Other or antithesis.
The transition is rendered intelligible by the fact that it is not only implicitly contained in the starting-point, but that this latter directly suggests the transition, that is, this characteristic is also posited and is therefore in it. In this way its determinate existence is something given for consciousness, which makes use of ordinary ideas just in so far as it has to do with immediate existence, which is here a determination or quality of thought. Equally intelligible is the result, the Absolutely-necessary; it contains mediation, and it is just this understanding of the connection in general which passes for being the easiest possible, a connection which in a finite way is taken as the connection of the one with an Other, but which, on the other hand, carries its corrective with it in so far as this connection issues in an insufficient end. A connection of this kind, owing to the fact that the law which governs it constantly requires that it should repeat itself in the matter which composes it, always lead up to an Other, that is, to a negative, while the affirmative which reappears in this act of development is simply something which issues from itself, and thus the one as well as the Other finds no rest, and no satisfaction. The Absolutely-necessary, again, since regarded from one point of view it itself produces that connection, is something which can also break off the connection, bring back into itself this going out of itself and secure the final result. The Absolutely-necessary is, because it is; thus that Other and the act of going out towards that Other are set aside, and by this unconscious inconsequence satisfaction is secured.
THE FOREGOING LECTURES have dealt with the dialectical element, with the absolute fluidity, of the characteristics that enter into the movement which represents this first form of the elevation of the spirit to God. We have now further to deal with the result in itself as defined in accordance with the standpoint adopted.
This result is the absolutely necessary Essence. The meaning of a result is known to consist simply in this, that in it the determination of the mediation, and consequently of the result, has been absorbed in something higher. The mediation was the self-annulling of the mediation. Essence means what is as yet absolutely abstract self-identity; it is not subject, and still less is it Spirit. The entire determination is found in absolute necessity, which in its character as Being is at the same time what has immediate Being, and which, as a matter of fact, implicitly determines itself as subject, but at first in the purely superficial form of something having Being, in the form of the Absolutely-necessary.
The fact that this determination is not adequate to express our idea of God is a defect which we may in the meantime leave alone, inasmuch as it has been already indicated that the other proofs bring with them further and more concrete determinations. There are, however, religious and philosophical systems whose defectiveness consists just in this, that they have not got beyond the characteristic of absolute necessity. The consideration of the more concrete forms in which this principle has embodied itself in religion, belongs to the philosophy of religion and to the history of religion. Regarding the subject in this aspect, it may here be merely remarked that in general those religions which have this determinateness as their basis have, so far as the inner logical development of concrete Spirit is concerned, richer and more varied elements than any which the abstract principle at first brings with it. In the sphere of phenomena and in consciousness the other moments of the Idea in its full and completed form, are superadded in a way which is inconsistent with that abstract principle. It is, however, essential to find out whether these additions in the way of definite form belong merely to imagination, and whether the concrete in its inner nature does not get beyond that abstraction — so that, as in the Oriental and particularly in the Indian mythology, the infinite realm of divine persons who are brought in not only as forces in general, but as self-conscious, willing figures, continues to be devoid of Spirit — or whether, on the other hand, spite of that one necessity, the higher spiritual principle emerges in these persons, and whether, in consequence, spiritual freedom comes to view in their worshippers. Thus in the religion of the Greeks we see absolute necessity in the form of Fate occupying the place of what is supreme and ultimate, and it is only in subordination to this necessity that we have the joyous company of the concrete and living Gods. These are also conceived of as spiritual and conscious, and in the above-mentioned and in other mythologies are multiplied so as to make a still larger crowd of heroes, nymphs of the sea, of the rivers, and so on, muses, fauns, &c., and are connected with the ordinary external life of the world and its contingent things, partly as chorus and accompaniment in the form of a further particularisation of one of the divine supreme deities, partly as figures of minor importance. Here necessity constitutes the abstract force which is above all the particular spiritual, moral, and natural forces. These latter, however, partly possess the character of non-spiritual, merely natural force, which remains completely under the power of necessity, while their personalities are merely personifications; and yet, although they may not exactly deserve to be called persons, they also partly contain the higher characteristic of subjective inherent freedom. In this way they occupy a position above that of their mistress, namely, necessity, to which only the limited element in this deeper principle is subordinate, a principle which has elsewhere to await its purification from this finitude in the region of which it at first appears, and has to manifest itself independently in its infinite freedom.
The logical working out of the category of absolute necessity is to be looked for in systems which start from abstract thoughts. This application in detail of the category has reference to the relation between this principle and the manifoldness of the natural and spiritual world. If absolute necessity thus forms the basis as representing what is alone true and truly real, in what relation do material things stand to it? These things are not only natural things, but also include Spirit, the spiritual individuality with all its conceptions, interests, and aims. This relation has, however, been already defined in connection with the principle referred to. They are contingent things. Further, they are distinct from absolute necessity itself; but they have no independent Being as against it, and neither has it, consequently, as against them. There is only one Being, and this belongs to necessity, and things by their very nature form part of it. What we have defined as absolute necessity has to be more definitely hypostatised in the form of universal Being or Substance, while, in its character as a result, it is a self-mediated unity in virtue of the abrogation of mediation. It is thus simple Being, and is what alone represents the subsisting element of things. When our attention was previously called to necessity in the form of Greek Fate, it was thought of as characterless or indeterminate force; but Being itself has already come down from the abstraction referred to, to the level of the things above which it ought to be. Still, if Essence or Substance itself were merely an abstraction, things would have an independent existence of concrete individuality outside of it. It must at the same time be characterised as the force of these things, the negative principle which makes its validity felt in them, and by means of which they represent what is perishing and transitory and has merely a phenomenal existence. We have seen how this negative element represents the peculiar nature of contingent things. They have thus this force within themselves, and do not represent manifestation in general, but the manifestation of necessity. This necessity contains things, or rather it contains them in their stage of mediation. It is not, however, mediated by something other than itself, but it is the direct mediation of itself with itself. It is the variable element or alternation of its absolute unity whereby it determines itself as mediation, that is, as external necessity, a relation of an Other to an Other, that is, whereby it spreads itself out into infinite multiplicity, into the absolutely conditioned world, but in such a way that it degrades external mediation, the contingent world to the condition of a world of appearance, and in this nullity comes into harmony with itself, posits itself as equal to itself, and does this in the world as representing its force. Everything is thus included in it, and it is immediately present in everything. It is the Being, as it also is the changeable and variable element of the world.
The determination of necessity as unfolded in the philosophical conception of it, is, speaking generally, the standpoint which we are in the habit of calling Pantheism, and sometimes in a more developed and definite form, sometimes in a more superficial form, it is what expresses the relation indicated. The very fact of the interest which this name has again awakened in modern times, and still more the interest of the principle itself, render it necessary that we should direct our attention to it. The misunderstanding which prevails with regard to Pantheism ought not to be allowed to pass without being mentioned and corrected; and after that we shall have to consider in this connection the place of the principle in the higher totality, in the true Idea of God. Since at a previous stage the consideration of the religious form taken by the principle was dispensed with, we may, by way of bringing a picture of it before the mind, take the Hindu religion as representing Pantheism in its most developed form. With this development there is bound up at the same time the fact that the absolute Substance, the sole and only One, is represented in the form of thought as distinguished from the accidental world, as existing. Religion in itself essentially involves the relation of Man to God, and still less when it appears in the form of Pantheism does it leave the one Essence in that condition of objectivity in which metaphysic imagines it has left it as an object while preserving its special character. We have to call attention first of all to the remarkable character of this attempt to bring Substance under the conditions of subjectivity. Self-conscious thought does not only make that abstraction of Substance, but is the very act of abstraction itself. It is just that simple unity as existing for itself which is called Substance. This thought is thus conceived of as the force which creates and preserves the world, and which also alters and changes its existence as this appears in particular forms. This thought is termed Brahma. It exists as the natural self-consciousness of the Brahmans, and as the self-consciousness of others who put under restraint and kill their consciousness in its manifold forms, their sensations, their material and spiritual interests, and all the active life connected with them, and reduce it to the perfect simplicity and emptiness of that substantial unity. Thus this thought, this abstraction of men in themselves, is held to be the force of the world. The universal force takes particular forms in gods, who are nevertheless transitory and temporary; or, what comes to the same thing, all life, whether in the form of spiritual or natural individuality, is torn away from the finitude of its perfectly conditioned connection — all understanding in this latter being destroyed — and is elevated into the form of divine existence.
As we were reminded, the principle of individualisation appears in this Pantheism in its several religious shapes, in a form inconsistent with the force of substantial unity. Individuality, it is true, does not exactly get the length of being personality, but the force unfolds itself in a sufficiently wild way as an illogical transition into its opposite. We find ourselves in a region of unbridled madness in which the present in its most ordinary form is directly elevated to the rank of something divine, and Substance is conceived of as existing in finite shapes, while the shapes assumed have a volatile character and directly melt away.
The Oriental theory of the universe is in general represented by this idea of sublimity which puts all individualisation into special shapes, and infinitely extends all particular forms of existence and particular interests. It beholds the One in all things, and consequently clothes this purely abstract One in all the glory and splendour of the natural and spiritual universe. The souls of the Eastern Poets dive into this ocean and drown in it all the necessities, the aims, the cares of this petty circumscribed life, and revel in the enjoyment of this freedom, upon which they lavish by way of ornament and adornment all the beauty of the world.
It will be already clear from this picture, and this is a point upon which I have elsewhere explained my views, that the expression Pantheism, or rather the German expression in which it appears in a somewhat transposed form, that God is the One and All, or everything — τὸ ἓν καὶ πᾶν — leads to the false idea that in pantheistic religion or in philosophy, everything (Alles), that is, every existing thing in its finitude and particularity, is held to be possessed of Being as God or as a god, and that the finite is deified as having Being. It could only be a narrow and ordinary or rather a scholastic kind of mind which would expect this to be the case, and which, being perfectly unconcerned about what actually is, sticks to one category, and to the category, in fact, of finite particularisation, and accordingly conceives of the manifoldness which it finds mentioned, as a permanent, existing, substantial particularisation. There can be no mistake but that the essential and Christian definition of freedom or individuality, which as free is infinite in itself and is personality, has misled the Understanding into conceiving of the particularisation of finitude under the category of an existing unchangeable atom, and into overlooking the moment of the negative which is involved in force and in the general system to which it belongs. It imagines Pantheism as saying that all, that is, all things in their existing isolation, are God, since it takes the πᾶν in this definite category as referring to all and every individual thing. Such an absurd idea has never come into anybody’s head outside of the ranks of these opponents of Pantheism. This latter represents a view which is, on the contrary, quite the opposite of that which they associate with it. The finite, the contingent is not something which subsists for itself. In the affirmative sense it is only a manifestation, a revelation of the One, only an appearance of it which is itself merely contingency. The fact is that it is the negative aspect, the disappearance in the one force, the ideality of what has Being as a momentary standpoint in the force, which is the predominant aspect. In opposition to this the Understanding holds that these things exist for themselves and have their essence in themselves, and are thus in and in accordance with this finite essentiality, supposed to be divine or even to be God. They cannot free themselves from the absoluteness of their finitude, and this finitude is not thought of as something which disappears and is absorbed in this unity with the Divine, but is still preserved by them in it as existing. On the other hand, since the finite is, as they say, robbed of its infinitude by Pantheism, the finite has in consequence no longer any Being at all.
It is preferable to use the expression, “the philosophical systems of substantiality,” and not to speak of systems of Pantheism, because of the false idea associated with this term. We may take the Eleatic system in general as representing these in ancient times, and the Spinozistic as their modern representative. These systems of substantiality are, as we have seen, more logical than the religions corresponding to them, since they keep within the sphere of metaphysical abstraction. The one aspect of the defect which attaches to them is represented by the one-sidedness referred to as existing in the idea formed by the Understanding of the course taken by the spirit’s elevation to God. That is to say, they start from actual existence, treat it as a nullity, and recognise the Absolute One as the truth of this existence. They start with a presupposition, they negate it in the absolute unity, but they don’t get out of this unity back to the presupposition. They don’t think of the world, which is considered to be merely comprised within an abstraction of contingency, of the many and so on, as produced out of Substance. Everything passes into this unity as into a kind of eternal night, while this unity is not characterised as a principle which moves itself to its manifestation, or produces it, “as the unmoved which moves,” according to the profound expression of Aristotle.
(a.) In these systems the Absolute, or God, is defined as the One, Being, the Being in all existence, the absolute Substance, the Essence which is necessary not through an Other, but in-and-for-itself, the Causa Sui, the cause of itself, and consequently its own effect, that is, the mediation which cancels itself. The unity implied in this latter characteristic belongs to an infinitely deeper and more developed form of thought than the abstract unity of Being, or the One. This conception has been sufficiently explained. Causa Sui is a very striking expression for that unity, and we may accordingly give some further attention to its elucidation. The relation of cause and effect belongs to the moment of mediation through an Other already referred to, and which we saw in necessity, and is its definite form. Anything is completely mediated by an Other in so far as this Other is its cause. This is the original thing or fact as absolutely immediate and independent; the effect, on the other hand, is what is posited merely, dependent, and so forth. In the antithesis of Being and Nothing, One and Many, and so on, the characteristics are found existing in such a way as to imply that they are matched with each other in their relation, and yet that they have, as unrelated, a valid independent existence besides. The Positive, the Whole, and so on, is, it is true, related to the Negative, to the parts, and this relation forms part of its essential meaning; but the Positive as well as the Negative, the Whole, the parts, and so on, have in addition an independent existence outside of this relation. But cause and effect have a meaning simply and solely in virtue of their relation. The meaning of the cause does not extend beyond the fact that it has an effect. The stone which falls has the effect of producing an impression on the object upon which it falls. Looked at apart from this effect which it has as a heavy body, it is physically separate and distinct from other equally heavy bodies. Or, to put it otherwise, since it is a cause while it continues to produce this impression, if we, for example, imagine its effect to be transitory, then when it strikes against another body it ceases so far to be a cause, and outside of this relation it is just a stone, which it was before. This idea haunts the popular mind chiefly in so far as it characterises the thing as the original fact and as continuing to exist outside of that effect it produces. Apart from that effect which it has produced, the stone is undoubtedly a stone, only it is not a cause. It is a cause only in connection with its effect, or, to introduce the note of time, during its effect.
Cause and effect are thus, speaking generally, inseparable. Each has meaning and existence only in so far as it stands in this relation to the other, and yet they are supposed to be absolutely different. We cling with equal firmness to the idea that the cause is not the effect and the effect is not the cause, and the Understanding holds obstinately to this fact of the independent being of these two categories and of the absence of relation between them.
When, however, we have come to see that the cause is inseparable from the effect, and that it has any meaning only as being in the latter, then it follows that the cause itself is mediated by the effect; it is only in and through the effect that it is cause. This, however, means nothing more than that the cause is the cause of itself, and not of an Other. For this which is supposed to be an Other is of such a kind that the cause is first a cause in it, and therefore in it simply reaches itself, and in it affects only itself.
Jacobi has some reflections on this Spinozistic category, the Causa Sui (“Letters on the Doctrine of Spinoza,” 2nd ed., ), and I refer to his criticisms upon it just because they afford us an example of how Jacobi, the pioneer of the party of immediate knowledge or faith, who is so much given to rejecting the Understanding in his consideration of thought, does not get beyond the mere Understanding. I pass over what he says in the passage referred to regarding the distinction between the category of ground and consequence, and that of cause and effect, and the fact that in his later controversial essays he imagines he has found in this difference a true description and definition of the nature of God. I merely indicate the more immediate conclusion referred to by him, namely, that from the interchange of the two “it may be successfully inferred that things can originate without originating, and alter without undergoing alteration, and can be before and after each other without being before and after.” Such conclusions are too absurd to require any further comment. The contradiction to which the Understanding reduces a principle is an ultimate one; it is simply the limit of the horizon of thought beyond which it is not possible to go, but in presence of which we must turn back. We have, however, seen how the solution of this contradiction is reached, and we shall apply it to the contradiction in the form in which it here appears and is here stated, or rather we shall simply briefly indicate the estimate to be formed of the above assertion. The conclusion referred to, that things may originate without originating, and alter without undergoing alteration, is manifestly absurd. We can see that it expresses the idea of self-mediation through an Other, of mediation as self-annulling mediation, but likewise that this mediation is directly abandoned. The abstract expression, Things, does its part in bringing the finite before the mind. The finite is a form of limited Being to which only one of two opposite qualities attaches, and which does not remain with itself in the Other, but simply perishes. But then the Infinite is this mediation with self through the Other, and without repeating the exposition of this conception, we may take an example from the sphere of natural things without going at all to that of spiritual existence, namely, life as a whole. What is well known to us as its self-preservation is “successfully” expressed in terms of thought as the infinite relation in virtue of which the living individual of whose process of self-preservation we alone speak here, without paying attention to its other characteristics, continually produces itself in its existence. This existence is not identical Being, Being in a state of repose, but, on the contrary, represents origination, alteration, mediation with an Other, though it is a mediation which returns to itself. The living force of what has life consists in making life originate, and the living already is; and so we may indeed say — though it is certainly a bold expression — that such and such a thing originates without originating. It undergoes alteration; every pulsation is an alteration not only in all the pulse-veins, but in all the parts of its entire constitution. In all this change it remains the same individual, and it remains such only in so far as it is this inherently self-altering active force. We may thus say of it that it alters without undergoing alteration, and finally — though we cannot certainly say that of the things — that it previously exists without existing previously, just as we have seen with regard to the cause that it exists previously, is the original cause, while at the same time previously, before its effect, it is not a cause, and so on. It is, however, tedious, and would even be an endless task to follow up and arrange the expressions in which the Understanding presents its finite categories and seeks to give them the character of something permanent.
This annihilation of the category of causality as used by the Understanding takes place in connection with the conception which is expressed by the term Causa Sui. Jacobi, without recognising in it this negation of the finite relation, the speculative element, that is, despatches it simply in a psychological, or, if you like, in a pragmatical fashion. He declares that “it is difficult to conclude from the apodictic proposition, everything must have a cause, that it is possible everything may not have a cause. Therefore it is that the Causa Sui has been invented.” It is certainly difficult for the Understanding not only to have to abandon its apodictic proposition, but to have to assume another possibility which, moreover, has a wrong look in connection with the expression referred to. But it is not hard for reason, which, on the contrary, in its character as the free, and especially as the religious human spirit, abandons such a finite relation as this of mediation with an Other, and knows how to solve in thought the contradiction which comes to consciousness in thought.
Dialectic development, such as has been here given, does not, however, belong to the systems of simple substantiality, to pantheistic systems. They do not get beyond Being or Substance, a form which we shall take up later on. This category, taken in itself, is the basis of all religions and philosophies. In all these God is Absolute Being, an Essence, which exists absolutely in-and-for-itself, and does not exist through an Other, but represents independence pure and simple.
(b.) Categories like these, which are of so abstract a character, do not apply very widely, and are very unsatisfactory. Aristotle (“Metaphysics,” i. 5) says of Xenophanes, that “he was the first to unify (ἑνίσας), he did not advance anything of a definite nature, and so gazing into the whole Heavens — into space (ins Blaue), as we say — said, the One is God.” The Eleatics, who followed him, showed more definitely that the many and the characteristics which rest on multiplicity lead to contradiction and resolve themselves into nothing; and Spinoza, in particular, showed that all that is finite disappears in the unity of Substance, and thus there is no longer left any further, concrete, fruitful determination for this Substance itself. Development has to do only with the form of the starting-points which finds itself in presence of subjective reflection, and with that of its dialectic, by means of which it brings back into that universality the particular and finite, which appear in an independent way. It is true that in Parmenides this One is defined as thought, or that which thinks, what has Being; and so, too, in Spinoza, Substance is defined as the unity of Being (of extension) and thought. Only, one cannot therefore say that this Being or Substance is hereby posited as something which thinks, that is, as activity which determines itself in itself. On the contrary, the unity of Being and thought continues to be conceived of as the One, the Unmoved, the Stolid. There is an outward distinction into attributes and modes, movement and will, a distinction effected by the Understanding. The One is not unfolded as self-developing necessity, not, in accordance with what is indicated by its notion, as the process which mediates the necessity with itself and within itself. If the principle of movement is here wanting, it is certainly found in more concrete principles in the flux of Heraclitus, in number too, and so on; but, on the one hand, the unity of Being, the divine self-equality, is not preserved, and, on the other, a principle of this kind stands in exactly the same relation to the ordinary existing world as the Being, the One, or the Substance referred to.
(c.) Besides this One there is, however, the actual contingent world, Being with the quality of the Negative, the realm of limitations and things finite, and in this connection it makes no difference whether this realm is conceived of as a realm of external existence, of semblance or illusion, or, according to the definition of superficial Idealism, as a merely subjective world, a world of consciousness. This manifoldness with its infinite developments is, to begin with, separated from that Substance, and we have to find out in what relation it stands to this One. On the one hand, this definite existence of the world is merely taken for granted. Spinoza, whose system is the most fully developed, starts from definitions, that is, from the actual characteristics of thought and of ordinary ideas in general. The starting-points of consciousness are presupposed. On the other hand, the Understanding forms this accidental world into a system in accordance with the relations or categories of external necessity. Parmenides gives the beginnings of a system of the phenomenal world at the head of which the goddess Necessity is placed. Spinoza did not construct any philosophy of Nature, but treated of the other part of concrete philosophy, namely, a system of ethics. This system of ethics was from one point of view to be logically connected with the principle of absolute Substance, at least in a general way, because Man’s highest characteristic, his tendency to seek after God, is the pure love of God, according to Spinoza’s expression, sub specie æterni. Only, the principles which underlie his philosophical treatment of the subject, the content, the starting-points, have no connection with the Substance itself. All systematic detailed treatment of the phenomenal world, however logical it may be in itself, when it follows the ordinary procedure, and starts with what is perceived by the senses, becomes an ordinary science in which what is recognised as the Absolute itself, the One, Substance, is not supposed to be living, is not the moving principle, the method, for it is devoid of definite character. There is nothing left of it for the phenomenal world, unless that this natural and spiritual world in general is wholly abstract, is a phenomenal world, a world of appearance, or else that the Being of the world in its affirmative form is Being, the One, Substance, while the particularisation in virtue of which Being is a world, evolution, emanation, is a falling of Substance out of itself into finitude, which is an absolutely inconceivable mode of existence. It is further implied that in Substance itself there is no principle involving the characteristic of being creative; and thirdly, that it is likewise abstract force, the positing of finitude as something negative, the disappearance of the finite.
(Concluded 19th August 1829.)
KANT HAS CRITICISED this proof too, as well as the other proofs of the existence of God, and it was chiefly owing to him that they were discredited, so that it is now scarcely considered worth while to look at them closely. And yet Kant says of this proof that it deserves to be always regarded with respect. When, however, he adds that the teleological proof is the oldest, he is wrong. The first determination of God is that of force or power, and the next in order is that of wisdom. This is the proof we meet with first amongst the Greeks also, and it is stated by Socrates (Xenophon, Memor., at the end of Book First). Socrates takes conformity to an end, especially in the form of the Good, as his fundamental principle. The reason why he is in prison, he declares, is that the Athenians consider it to be good. This proof accordingly coincides historically with the development of freedom.
We have already considered the transition from the religion of power to the religion of spirituality in general. We have already had in the intermediate stages also the very same mediation which we recognise as present in the religion of beauty, but broken up and as yet devoid of any spiritual character. But since with that transition to the religion of spirituality there is added another and essential determination, we have first to bring out its meaning in an abstract way, and direct attention to it.
Here we have the determination of freedom as such, of an activity as freedom, a working in accordance with freedom, no longer an unhindered working in accordance with power, but a working in accordance with ends. Freedom is self-determination, and what is active has self-determination implicitly as its end in so far as it spontaneously determines itself within itself. Power is simply the act of self-projection, and implies that there is an unreconciled element in what is projected; and though this is implicitly an image or picture of the power, still it is not expressly felt in consciousness that what creates simply preserves and produces itself in its creation in suchwise that the characteristics of the Divine itself appear in the creature. God is here conceived of as possessed of the characteristic of wisdom, of activity in accordance with an end. Power is good and righteous, but action in accordance with an end is what first constitutes this characteristic of rationality, according to which nothing comes out of the act but what had been already previously determined upon, that is, this identity of the creating power with itself.
The difference which exists among the proofs of the existence of God consists simply in the difference of their determination. There is in them a mediation, a starting-point, and a point at which we arrive. In the Teleological and Physico-theological Proofs both points possess in common the characteristic of conformity to an end. We start from a form of Being which is actually characterised as in conformity with an end, and what is thereby mediated is the idea of God as positing and working out an end. Being, considered as the immediate from which we start in the Cosmological Proof, is, to begin with, a manifold, contingent Being. In accordance with this, God is defined as necessity which has Being in-and-for-itself, the force or power which is above the contingent. The higher determination accordingly is, that conformity to an end is present in Being. The rational element already finds expression in the end in the form of a free self-determination and carrying out of this content, so that this content which at first in its character as an end is inward, is realised, and the reality corresponds to the notion or end.
A thing is good in so far as it fulfils its destiny or end, and this means that the reality is adequate to the notion or destined character. In the world we perceive a harmonious working of external things, of things which exist in a relation of indifference to each other, which come into existence accidentally so far as other things are concerned, and have no essential reference to one another. Still, although things thus exist apart from each other, there is evidence of a unity in virtue of which there is an absolute conformity amongst them. Kant states this in a detailed way, as follows. The present world reveals to us an inexhaustible scene of manifold life, of order, conformity to ends, and so on. This determination in accordance with an end is seen specially in what has life, both as it is in itself and in its relation to things outside of it. Man, the animal, is something inherently manifold, has certain members, entrails, &c., and although these appear to exist alongside of each other, still the general determination in accordance with an end is present through them all and maintains them. The one exists only through the other and for the other, and all the members and component parts of men are simply means for the self-preservation of the individual which is here the end. Man, all that has life in fact, has many needs: air, nourishment, light, &c., are necessary for his sustenance. All this actually exists on its own account, and the capacity of making it minister to an end is external to it. Animals, flesh, air, and so on, which are required by Man, do not in themselves declare that they are ends, and yet the one is simply a means for the other. There is here an inner connection which is necessary, but which does not exist as such. This inner connection is not made by the objects themselves, but is produced by something else, as these things themselves are. The conformity to an end does not produce itself spontaneously; the active working in accordance with an end is outside of the things, and this harmony which implicitly exists and posits itself, is the force which presides over these objects, which destines them to stand to each other in the relation of things whose existence is determined by an end. The world is thus no longer an aggregate of contingent things, but a collection of relations in conformity with an end, which, however, attach themselves to things from without. This relation of ends must have a cause, a cause full of power and wisdom.
This activity in accordance with an end, this cause, is God.
Kant remarks that this proof is the clearest of all, and can be understood by the ordinary man. It is owing to it that Nature first acquires an interest; it gives life to the knowledge of Nature, just as it has its origin in Nature. This is in a general form the Teleological Proof.
Kant’s criticism is accordingly as follows. This proof, he says, is defective above all, because it takes into consideration merely the form of things. Reference to an end applies only to the determination of form. Each thing preserves itself, and is therefore not merely a means for others, but is an end itself. The quality in virtue of which a thing can be a means has reference to its form merely, and not to its matter. The conclusion, therefore, does not carry us further than the fact, that there is a forming cause; but we do not prove by this that matter also has been produced by it. The proof, says Kant, does not therefore adequately express the idea of God as the creator of matter and not merely of form.
Form contains the characteristics which are mutually related; but matter is to be thought of as without form, and consequently as without relation. This proof therefore stops short at a demiurge, a constructor of matter, and does not get the length of a creator. So far as this criticism is concerned, we may undoubtedly say that all relation is form, and this implies that form is separated from matter. We can see that God’s activity would in this way be a finite one. When we produce anything technical we must take the material for it from the outside. Activity is thus limited and finite. Matter is thus thought of as permanently existing for itself, as eternal. That, in virtue of which things are brought into connection with each other, represents the qualities, the form, not the permanent existence of things as such. The subsistence or permanent existence of things is their matter. It is, to begin with, undoubtedly correct that the relations of things are included within their form; but the question is, Is this distinction, this separation between form and matter admissible, and can we thus put each specially by itself? It has been shown, on the contrary, in the Logic (Encyclop. Phil., § 129), that formless matter is a nonentity, a pure abstraction of the Understanding, which we may certainly construct, but which ought not to be given out to be anything true. The matter which is opposed to God as something unalterable is simply a product of reflection, or, to put it otherwise, this identity of formlessness, this continuous unity of matter is itself one of the specific qualities of form. We must therefore recognise the truth that matter which is thus placed on one side by itself, belongs itself to the other side, to form. But then the form is also identical with itself, relates itself to itself, and in virtue of this has just the very quality which is distinguished from it as matter. The activity of God Himself, His simple unity with Himself, the form, is matter. This remaining equal to self, this subsistence is present in the form in such a way that the latter relates itself to itself, and that is its subsistence, which is just what matter is. Thus the one does not exist apart from the other; on the contrary, they are both the same.
Kant goes on to say, further, that the syllogism starts from the fact of the order and conformity to an end observable in the world. We find there arrangements in accordance with an end. It is this reference of things to an end, not found in the things themselves, which accordingly serves for the starting-point. We have in this way a third thing, a cause, posited. From the fact of arrangement in accordance with an end, we reason to the existence of its author, who has established the teleology of the relations. We cannot therefore infer the existence of anything more than what, so far as content is concerned, is actually given in presently existing things, and is in conformity with the starting-point. The teleological arrangement strikes us as wonderfully grand, as one of supreme excellence and wisdom; but a wisdom which is very great and worthy of admiration is not yet absolute wisdom. It is an extraordinary power which is recognised as present here, but it is not yet Almighty Power. This, says Kant, is a leap which we are not justified in taking, and so we take refuge in the Ontological Proof, and this starts from the conception of the most real Essence. The mere sense-perception, however, from which we start in the Teleological Proof, does not bring us so far as this totality. It must certainly be granted that the starting-point has a smaller content than what we arrive at. In the world there is merely relative and not absolute wisdom. We must look at this more closely. We have here a syllogism. We reason from the one to the other. We start with the peculiar constitution of the world, and from this go on to conclude the existence of an active force, of something that binds together things which exist apart from each other; this represents their inner nature, their potentiality, and is not present in them in an immediate way. The form of the reasoning process here produces the false impression that God has a basis from which we start. God appears as something conditioned. The arrangement of things in accordance with an end is the condition, and the existence of God is apparently asserted to be something mediated or conditioned. This is an objection upon which Jacobi laid special stress. We try, he says, to reach the unconditioned through the conditions. But, as we have already seen, this merely seems to be the case, and this false impression disappears of itself when we reach the real meaning of the result. So far as this meaning is concerned, it will be allowed that the process is merely the course followed by subjective knowledge. This mediation does not attach to God Himself. He is certainly the Unconditioned, infinite activity which determines itself in accordance with ends, and which has arranged the world on a teleological plan. We do not imagine, when we speak of that process of knowledge, that these conditions from which we start precede that infinite activity. On the contrary, this represents the process of subjective knowledge only, and the result we reach is that it is God who has established these teleological arrangements, and that therefore they represent something established in the first instance by Him, and are not to be regarded as something fundamental. The ground or principle from which we start disappears in what is characterised as the true principle. This is the meaning of the conclusion, that what conditions is itself in turn explained to be the conditioned. The result declares that to posit as the foundation what is itself conditioned would be to introduce a defective element. This procedure accordingly, both actually and as regards its end, is not merely subjective, not something which goes on merely in thought; on the contrary, this defective side is itself removed by means of the result. The objective thus asserts its presence in this form of knowledge. There is not only an affirmative transition here, but there is also a negative moment in it, which is not, however, posited in the form of the syllogism. There is therefore a mediation which is the negation of the first immediacy. The course followed by Spirit is, it is true, a transition to the activity which is in-and-for-itself and posits ends, but, it is involved in the course thus followed, that the actual existence of this teleological arrangement is not held to represent Being in-and-for-itself. This is found only in reason, the activity of eternal reason. That other Being is not true Being, but only an appearance or semblance of this activity.
In dealing with the determination of ends, we must further distinguish between Form and Content. If we consider form pure and simple, we have Being in accordance with an end which is finite, and, so far as form is concerned, its finitude consists in the fact that the end and means, or the material in which the end is realised, are different. This is finitude. We thus use a certain material in order to carry out our ends, since the activity and the material are different. The finitude of form is what constitutes the finitude of Being in accordance with an end. The truth of this relation, however, is not anything of this kind. On the contrary, the truth is in the teleological activity which is means and matter in itself, a teleological activity which accomplishes its ends through itself. This is what is meant by the infinite activity of the end. The end accomplishes itself, realises itself through its own activity, and thus comes into harmony with itself in the process of realising itself. The finitude of the end consists, as we saw, in the separableness of means and material. Viewed thus, the end represents what is as yet a technical mode of action. The truth of the determination of the end consists in the fact that the end has within itself its means, as also the material in which it realises itself. Regarded in this aspect, the end is true so far as the form is concerned, for objective truth consists simply in the correspondence between the notion and reality. The end is true only when what uses the means, and the means, as well as the reality, are identical with the end. The end thus presents itself as something which possesses reality in itself, and is not something subjective, one-sided, the moments of which exist outside of it. This is the truth of the end, while the teleological relation seen in finitude represents, on the contrary, something untrue. It is necessary to remark here that teleological activity as representing a relation thus defined in accordance with its truth, exists in the form of something higher, which is, however, at the same time present, and which we can certainly speak of as the Infinite, since it is a teleological activity which has both material and means in itself. Regarded from another point of view, however, it is finite as well. Teleological determination in this its true form, which is the form we require it to have, is found actually existing, though only in one of its aspects, in what has life, in what is organic. Life as the subject is the soul. This latter is the end, that is, it posits itself, realises itself, and thus the product is the same as the thing that produces. What has life is, however, an organism; the organs are the means. The living soul has a body in itself, and it is only in union with this that it constitutes a whole, something real. The organs are the means of life, and these very means, the organs themselves, are also the element in which life realises and maintains itself, they are material also. This is self-preservation. What has life preserves itself; it is beginning and end; the product is at the same time what begins. The living as such is constantly in a state of activity. The feeling of need is the beginning of activity, and impels to the satisfaction of the need, and this satisfaction, again, is the beginning of a new need. The living exists only in so far as it is constantly a product. This gives us the truth of the end so far as form is concerned. The organs of the living being are means, but they are equally the end; in exercising their activity they produce themselves only. Each organ maintains the other, and in this way maintains itself. This activity constitutes an end, a soul, which is present in every point of the organism. Every part of the body experiences sensation; the soul is in it. Here we have teleological activity in its true form. But the living subject is also something thoroughly finite. The teleological activity presents here the character of something which is formally true, but which is not complete. The living being produces itself; it has the material of production in itself. Each organ excretes animal lymph which is made use of by other organs in order to reproduce themselves. The living being has the material in itself, only this is merely an abstract process. Finitude shows itself in this, that while the organs draw their nourishment from themselves they employ material for this taken from the outside. Everything organic is related to inorganic Nature, which has a definite independent existence. Regarded in one aspect, the organism is infinite since it represents a circle of pure return into self; but it is at the same time in a state of tension relatively to external inorganic Nature, and has its needs. Here the means come from the outside. Man requires air, light, water; he also feeds on other living things, on animals which he in this way reduces to the state of inorganic Nature, to means. It is this relation particularly which leads to the idea of a higher unity representing that harmony in which the means correspond to the end. This harmony is not found in the subject itself, and yet it has in it the harmony which constitutes organic life, as we have seen. The whole construction of the organs, of the nerve and blood system, of the entrails, lungs, liver, stomach, and so on, presents a remarkable agreement. But does not this harmony itself demand something else outside of the subject? We may let this question alone at present; for if we get a grip of the notion of organism such as has been given, then this development of teleological determination is itself a necessary consequence of the living nature of the subject in general. If we do not get a grip of that notion, then the living being will not be the concrete unity referred to. In order to understand what life is, recourse is accordingly had to external mechanical modes of conception as illustrated by the action of the blood, and to chemical conceptions as seen in analysis of foods. It is not, however, possible by such processes to discover what life itself is. It is necessary to suppose the existence of some third thing which has brought these processes into existence. As a matter of fact, however, it is just the subject which is this unity, this harmony of the organism. Still this unity involves the relation of the living subject to external Nature, which is thought of as having a merely indifferent and accidental connection with the subject.
The conditions involved in this relation do not form the sole basis of the development of what has life; still, if the living being did not find these conditions ready to hand, it could not possibly exist. The observation of this fact directly produces the feeling that there must exist something higher which has introduced this harmony. It at once awakens sympathetic attention and admiration in men. Every animal has its own narrow range of means of sustenance, and indeed many animals are limited to a single source of sustenance, human nature having in this respect also the most general character. This fact accordingly, that there exists for every animal this outward particular condition, rouses in Man that feeling of astonishment which passes over into a sense of exalted reverence for that third something which has brought about this unity. This represents Man’s elevation to the thought of that higher existence which produces the conditions necessary for the accomplishment of its end. The subject secures its own preservation, and the act whereby it does this is, further, in all living things an unconscious one, is what in animals we term instinct. The one gets its means of sustenance by force, the other produces it with the help of art. This it is which we term the wisdom of God in Nature, in which we meet with that infinitely manifold arrangement in respect of the various activities and conditions necessary to the existence of all particular things. When we consider all those particular forms in which the living being shows its activity, we find that they are contingent, so to speak; that they have not been produced by the subject itself, and necessitate the existence of a cause outside of them. The fact of life merely involves self-preservation in general; but living beings differ from one another in an infinite variety of ways, and this variety is the work of something other than themselves. The question is simply this, How does inorganic Nature pass over into organic Nature, and how is it possible for it to serve as a means for what is organic? We are here met by a peculiar conception of the way in which these two come together. Animals are inorganic as contrasted with men, and plants are inorganic as contrasted with animals. But Nature, which is in itself inorganic, as represented, for instance, by the sun, the moon, and in general by what appears in the form of means and material, is in the first instance immediate, and exists previous to the organic. Regarded in this way, the relation is one in which the inorganic is independent, while, on the other hand, the organic is what is dependent. The former, the so-called immediate, is the unconditioned. Inorganic Nature appears complete in itself; plants, animals, men, approach it in the first instance from the outside. The earth might have continued to exist without vegetation, the vegetable kingdom without animals, the animal kingdom without men. These various forms of existence thus seem to be independent and to be there for themselves. We are in the habit of referring to this as a matter of experience. Thus there are mountains without any vegetation, without animals and men. The moon has no atmosphere, there does not go on in it any meteorological process such as supplies the conditions necessary for vegetation. It thus exists without having any vegetative nature, and so on. Inorganic existence of this kind appears as independent, and Man is related to it in an external way. The idea thus arises that Nature is in itself a producing force which creates blindly, and out of which vegetation comes. From this latter in turn comes what is animal, and then finally Man possessed of conscious thought. We can undoubtedly assert that Nature produces stages of which the one is always the condition of that which follows. But then, since organic life and Man thus appear on the scene in an accidental way, the question arises whether or not Man will get what is necessary. According to the idea referred to, this is equally a matter of chance, since here there is no unity having a valid existence on its own account. Aristotle gave expression to the same idea. Nature is constantly producing living things, and the point is whether or not these will be able to exist. Whether or not any of the things thus produced will be able to maintain itself, is a pure matter of accident. Nature has already made an endless number of attempts, and has produced a host of monstrosities; myriads of beings of various forms have issued from her which were not, however, able to continue in existence, and besides, she did not concern herself at all with the disappearance of such forms of life. By way of proving this assertion, people are in the habit of directing attention specially to the remains of monsters which are still to be found here and there. These species disappeared, it is asserted, because the conditions necessary to their existence had ceased. Regarded in this fashion, the harmony which exists between the organic and the inorganic is held to be accidental. There is here no necessity to begin and ask about a unity. The presence of design is itself affirmed to be accidental. Now, here is what is really involved in this conception. What, speaking generally, we call inorganic Nature as such is thought of as having an independent existence, while the organic is attached to it in an external fashion, so that it is a mere matter of chance whether or not the organic finds the conditions of existence in what confronts it. So far as the form of what essentially constitutes the conception is concerned, we have to remark that inorganic Nature is what comes first, is what is immediate. It was in harmony with the childlike ideas of the Mosaic age that the heavens and the earth, light, and so on, should have been thought of as created first, while the organic appeared later in point of time. The question is this: Is that the true definition or essential nature of the notion of the inorganic, and do living things and Man represent what is dependent? Philosophy, on the other hand, explains the truth involved in the definition of the notion; and apart from this, Man is certain that he is related to the rest of Nature as an end, and that Nature is meant to be a means so far as he is concerned, and that this represents the relation in which the inorganic in general stands to the organic. The organic is in its formal aspect, and by its very nature, something which exists in accordance with an end. It is means and end, and is therefore something infinite in itself. It is an end which returns back into itself; and even regarded as something dependent on what is outside of it, it has the character of an end, and consequently it represents what is truly first in comparison with what has been termed the immediate, in comparison, that is, with Nature. This immediacy is merely one-sided determination, and ought to be brought down to the level of something that is merely posited. This is the true relation. Man is not an accident added on to what is first; but, on the contrary, the organic is itself what is first. The inorganic has in it merely the semblance of Being. This relation is logically developed in Science itself.
This relation, however, still involves an element of separation, as seen in the fact that the organic, regarded from one side, is related outwardly to inorganic Nature, which is not posited as existing in the organic itself. The living being develops out of the germ, and the development is the action of the limbs, the internal organs, and so on; the soul is the unity which brings this about. The truth, however, of organic and inorganic Nature here also is simply the essential relation between the two, their unity and inseparability. This unity is a third something which is neither the one nor the other. It is not found in immediate existence. The absolute determination which brings both, the organic as well as the inorganic, into unity, namely, the subject, is the organic; while the other appears as object, but changes itself into the predicate of the organic, into something which is held to belong to it. This is the reciprocal element in this relation. Both are put into one, and in this one each is something dependent and conditioned. We might call this third something, the thought to which consciousness raises itself, God, using the word in a general sense. It falls, however, very far short of the Notion of God. Taken in this sense, it represents the activity of production, which is a judgment whereby both sides are produced together. In the one Notion they harmonise and exist for one another. The thought to which we rise, namely, that the truth of the relation of ends is this third something, is thus absolutely correct, taking that third thing in the sense in which it has just been defined. Taken thus, however, it is defined in a formal way, and the definition rests, in fact, on something whose truth it is. It is itself living activity; but this is not yet Spirit, rational action. The correspondence between the Notion as representing the organic, and reality as representing the inorganic, simply expresses the essence of life itself. It is involved in a more definite form in what the ancients called the νοῦς. The world is a harmonious whole, an organic life which is determined in accordance with ends. It was this which the ancients held to be νοῦς, and, taken in a more extended signification, this life was also called the world-soul, the λόγος. All that is posited here is simply the fact of life, and it is not implied that the world-soul is distinguished as Spirit from this active life belonging to it. The soul is simply the living element in the organic; it is not something apart from the body, something material, but is rather the life-force which penetrates the body. Plato accordingly called God an immortal ξῶον, that is, an eternally living being. He did not get beyond the category of life. When we grasp the fact of life in its true nature, it is seen to be one principle, one organic life of the universe, one living system. All that is, simply constitutes the organs of the one subject. The planets which revolve round the sun are simply the giant members of this one system. Regarded in this fashion, the universe is not an aggregate of many accidents existing in a relation of indifference, but is a system endowed with life. With this thought we have not, however, yet reached the essential characteristic of Spirit.
We have considered the formal aspect of the relation of ends. The other aspect is that of the content. The question here may take any of the following forms: What are the essential characteristics of the end, or what is the content of the end which is being realised, or how are these ends constituted in respect of what is called wisdom? So far as the content is concerned, the starting-point is the same as that of experience. We start, that is, from immediate Being. The study of ends in the form in which we actually meet with them, has, when pursued from this side, contributed more than anything else to the neglect of the teleological proof, so much so indeed that this latter has come to be regarded with disdain. We are in the habit of speaking of the wise arrangements of Nature. The various and manifold kinds of animals are, as regards the real nature of the life they have, finite. The external means necessary for this life actually exist; life in its various forms is the end. If accordingly we ask what the substance of this end is, it is seen to be nothing else save the preservation of these insects, of these animals, &c. We may indeed find pleasure in contemplating their life; but the necessity of their nature and destiny is of an absolutely insignificant kind, or, to put it otherwise, is an absolutely insignificant conception. When we say, God has made things thus, we are making a pious observation, we are rising to God; but when we think of God we have the idea of an absolute, infinite end, and these petty ends present a sharp contrast to what we recognise as His actual nature. If we now consider what goes on in higher spheres of existence, and look at human ends, which we may regard as relatively the highest of all, we see that they are for the most part frustrated and disappear, leaving no permanent result. In Nature millions of seeds perish just when they begin to exist, and without ever being able to develop the life-force in them. The life of the largest portion of living things is based on the destruction of other living things; and the same holds good of higher ends. If we traverse the domain of morality, and go on even to its highest stage, namely, civil life, and then consider whether the ends here are realised or not, we shall find, indeed, that much is attained, but that still more is rendered abortive, and destroyed by the passions and wickedness of men; and this is true of the greatest and most exalted ends. We see the earth covered with ruins, with remains of the splendid edifices and works left by the finest nations whose ends we recognise as having a substantial value. Great natural objects and human works do indeed endure and defy time, but all that splendid national life has irrecoverably perished. We thus see how, on the one hand, petty, subordinate, even despicable designs are fulfilled; and, on the other, how those which are recognised as having substantial value are frustrated. We are here certainly forced to rise to the thought of a higher determination and a higher end, when we thus lament the misfortune which has befallen so much that is of high value, and mourn its disappearance. We must regard all those ends, however much they interest us, as finite and subordinate, and ascribe to their finitude the destruction which overtakes them. But this universal end is not discoverable in experience, and thus the general character of the transition is altered, for the transition means that we start from something given, that we reason syllogistically from what we find in experience. But then what we find present in experience is characterised by limitation. The supreme end is the Good, the general final-end of the world. Reason has to regard this end as the absolute final-end of the world, and must look upon it as being based purely on the essential nature of reason, beyond which Spirit cannot go. Reason in the form of thought is, however, recognised as being the source of this end. The next step accordingly is that this end should show that it is accomplished in the world. But the Good is what has a determinate character in-and-for-itself by means of reason; and to this, Nature stands opposed, partly as physical Nature which follows its own course and its own laws, and partly as the natural element in Man, his particular ends which are opposed to the Good. If we go by what our senses show us, we find much that is good in the world, but also an infinite quantity of evil, and we would just have to reckon up the amount of evil, and the amount of good which does not attain realisation, in order to discover which preponderates. The Good, however, is something absolutely substantial; it belongs to the very essence of its nature that it should be realised. But it is something which merely ought to be real, for it cannot reveal itself in experience. It stops short with being something which ought to exist, something which is a postulate. But since the Good has not itself the power thus to realise itself, it is necessary to postulate a third thing through which the final-end of the world will be realised. This is an absolute postulate. Moral good belongs essentially to Man; but since his power is finite, and since the realisation of the Good in him is limited owing to the natural element attaching to him, since, in fact, he is himself the enemy of the Good, it is not within his power to realise it. The existence of God is here conceived of simply as a postulate, as something that should be, and which should have for Man subjective certainty, because the Good represents what is ultimate in his reason. But this certainty is merely subjective; it remains merely a belief, an ideal, and it cannot be shown that it actually exists. Aye, if the Good is to be really moral and present, then we should have to go the length of requiring and presupposing the perpetual existence of the discord, for moral Good can only exist and can only be in so far as it is in conflict with evil. It would thus be necessary to postulate the perpetual existence of the enemy, of what is opposed to the Good. If, then, we turn to the content, we find it to be limited; and if we go on to the supreme end, we find ourselves in another region, where we start from what is inward, not from what is actually present and supplied by experience. If, on the other hand, we start from experience, the Good, the final-end is something subjective merely, and in this case the contradiction between Man’s finite life and the Good would have to exist always.
AMONGST THE PROOFS of the existence of God, the Cosmological occupies the first place. Only in it is the affirmative, absolute Being, the Infinite, defined not merely as infinite in general, but, in contrast to the characteristic of contingency, as absolutely necessary. The True is the absolutely necessary Essence, and not merely Being or Essence.
This category already involves other characteristics. In fact, these proofs might be multiplied by dozens; each stage of the logical Idea may contribute its quota. The characteristic of absolute necessity is involved in the course of thought described.
The absolutely necessary Essence, taken in a general, abstract sense, is Being not as immediate, but as reflected into itself. We have defined Essence as the non-finite, the negation of that negative we term the finite. That to which we make the transition is thus not abstract Being, barren Being, but Being which is the negation of the negation.
It involves in it the element of difference, the difference which carries itself back into simplicity. In this Infinite, this absolute Being or Essence, there is thus involved the determination of difference, negation of the negation, but difference as it relates itself to itself. But determination of this kind is what we call self-determination. Negation is determination or specification, negation of determination is itself an act of determination. To posit a difference, is just to posit a determination. Where there is no negation, there is no difference, no determination.
In this unity, in this absolute Being, there is thus involved determination in general, and it is indeed in it since it is self-determination. It is thus defined as determination which is in itself and does not come from without. This unrest is involved in its very nature as the negation of the negation, and this unrest determines itself more definitely as activity. This determination of Essence in itself is Necessity in itself, the positing of determination, of difference, and the cancelling and absorption of it in such a way that the one is action, and this self-determination thus reached remains in simple relation to itself.
Finite Being does not continue to be an Other; there is no gulf between the Infinite and the finite. The finite is something which cancels itself, loses itself in something higher, so that its truth is the Infinite, what has Being in-and-for-itself. Finite, contingent Being is something which implicitly negates itself, but this negation which it undergoes is just the Affirmative, a transition to affirmation, and this affirmation is the absolutely necessary Essence.
Another form of the argument, the basis of which is constituted by the same characteristic, and which is the same in respect of the characteristic of the form, though the content is greater, is seen in the Physico-theological or Teleological Proof. Here, too, we have finite Being on one side; but it is not determined merely abstractly as Being only, but as something which has in it a determination with a richer content, that of something living. Life taken in its more specific sense implies that there are ends in Nature, and that there is an arrangement in conformity with these ends, which is, at the same time, not produced by these ends, so that the orderly arrangement is there independently for itself, and though from a different point of view it may be characterised as an end also, still what is thus actually given shows itself to be in conformity with these ends.
The physico-theological method of regarding the world can be merely the study of outward teleological arrangement, and so this way of looking at things has fallen into discredit, and justly too; for here we have to do merely with finite ends, which require means, as, for instance, the fact that Man requires this or that for his animal life. This might be further specified. If we regard these ends as something primary, and hold that there exist means for the satisfaction of these ends, and that it is God who permits these means to exist for the sake of such ends, then we very soon come to see that this method of regarding things is inadequate to express what God is.
These ends, in so far as they appear in definite special forms, are seen to be essentially unimportant, so that we cannot possibly hold them in high esteem, and cannot conceive that they represent something which is the direct object of the will and wisdom of God. All this has been summed up in one of Goethe’s Xenien. There some one is represented as praising God the Creator, on the ground that He created the cork tree in order that we might have stoppers.
We may remark in reference to the Kantian philosophy that Kant, in his “Critique of Judgment,” adduced the important conception of inner ends, that is, the conception of life-force. This is Aristotle’s conception, namely, that every living thing is an end which has its means in itself, its members, its organisation; and the process of these members constitutes the end, that is to say, the movement of life.
This is infinite, not finite conformity to an end, in which end and means are not outside themselves. The means produces the end, and the end the means. The world is living, it contains the movement of life and the realm of living things. What has not life — inorganic Nature, the sun, the stars — stands in an essential and direct relation to what has life, and to Man in so far as he in a measure belongs to living Nature, and partly because he sets particular ends before himself. This finite conformity to an end is found in Man.
That is the characteristic note of life in general, and at the same time of life as it actually is, life as seen in the world. This, it is true, is life in itself, inner conformity to an end; but it means that each kind or species of life represents a very narrow sphere, and has a very limited nature.
The real advance accordingly is from this finite mode of life to absolute, universal conformity to an end, to the thought that this world is a κόσμος, a system, in which everything has an essential relation to everything else, and nothing is isolated; something which is regularly arranged in itself, in which everything has its place, is closely connected with the whole, subsists through the whole, and thus takes an active part in the production, in the life of the whole.
The main point thus is that a transition is made from finite life to one universal life, to one end which is articulated into particular ends, in such a way that in this particularisation things are in a condition of harmony and of reciprocal essential relation.
God is defined, to begin with, as the absolutely necessary Essence; but this definition, as Kant has already observed, falls very far short of expressing the conception of God. God alone is the absolute necessity, but this definition does not exhaust the conception of God; the definition in which He is described as the universal life-force, the one universal life, is both higher and deeper.
Since life is essentially subjectivity, something living, this universal life is subjective, the νοῦς, a soul. Thus the idea of the soul is involved in the universal life, the characteristic of the one all-disposing, all-ruling, organising νοῦς.
As regards the formal element here, we have to note the very same thing as we found in connection with the previous proofs. We have here once more the transition of the Understanding; because there are arrangements, ends of a like kind, there is a wisdom which disposes and orders everything. But the act of rising to this thought involves at the same time the negative moment, which is the main point, namely, that this life, these ends as they actually are, and as existing in their immediate finite form, do not represent what is true. On the contrary, it is this one life movement, this one νοῦς, which is what is true.
There are not two things; there is indeed a starting-point, but the mediation is of such a character that in the transition what is the first does not continue to be the basis, the condition. On the contrary, its untruth, its negation, is involved in this transition; the negation of the negative, finite element in it, the negation of the particularity of life. This negative is negated, and in this act of elevation, finite particularity disappears. As representing truth, the object of consciousness is the system of one life movement, the νοῦς of one life movement, the soul, the Universal Soul.
Here it happens again that this definition: God is the one universal active force of life, the soul which produces, posits, organises a κόσμος, is a conception which does not yet suffice to express the conception of God. It is essentially involved in the conception of God that He is Spirit.
We have still to consider the third, essential and absolute form from this point of view. In the transition just referred to, the content was life, the finite life movement, immediate life which actually exists. Here in the third form the content which forms the basis is Spirit. Put in the form of a syllogism, it runs thus: Because finite minds exist or are, — and it is Being which here constitutes the starting-point, — therefore the absolute Mind or Spirit exists or is.
But this “because,” this merely affirmative relation, is defective in this respect, that the finite minds would require to be thought of as the basis, and God would be a consequence of the existence of finite minds. The true form is: There are finite minds, but the finite has no truth, the truth of the finite spirit is the absolute Spirit.
The finitude of finite minds is no true Being; it is by its very nature dialectic, which implies that it abrogates itself, negates itself, and the negation of this finitude is affirmation as infinitude, as something universal in-and-for-itself. This is the highest form of the transition; for the transition is here Spirit itself.
There are in this connection two characteristics, Being and God. In so far as we start from Being, this latter, looked at as it first shows itself, is directly finite. Since these characteristics exist, we could equally as well begin from God and go on to Being, though, when we say we could, we must remember that we cannot speak of what we can do in connection with the conception of God, because He is absolute necessity.
This starting-point when it thus appears in finite form does not yet involve Being; for a God who is not, is something finite, and is not truly God. The finitude of this relation consists in the fact that it is subjective, that it is this general conception in fact. God has existence, but He has only this purely finite existence in our idea of Him.
This is one-sided; we have introduced into this content, namely, God, the taint of that one-sidedness, that finitude, which is termed the idea of God. The main point is that the idea should get rid of this defect whereby it is something merely represented in the mind, something subjective, and that this content should have attached to it the determination of Being.
We have to consider this second mediation as it appears in this finite form, or form of the Understanding, in the shape of the Ontological Proof. This proof starts from the Notion or conception of God, and goes from this to Being. We do not find this transition amongst the ancients, for instance in Greek philosophy, nor was it made in the Christian Church till after a long time. It was one of the great scholastic philosophers, Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, that profound, philosophical thinker, who first grasped this idea.
We have the idea of God; but He is not merely an idea, He is. How are we to make this transition? How are we to get to see that God is not merely something subjective in us? How is this determination of Being to be mediated with God?
The Kantian criticism was directed against this so-called Ontological Proof too, and with triumphant success, so to speak, in its day. It is still held at the present day that these proofs have been refuted as being worthless efforts on the part of the Understanding. We have, however, already recognised the fact that the act whereby these higher thoughts are here reached is the act of Spirit, the act peculiarly belonging to thinking Spirit, which Man will not renounce the right to exercise; and so, too, this proof is an act of the same sort.
The ancients did not know of this transition; for, in order to arrive at it, it is necessary that Spirit should go down into itself as deeply as possible. Spirit, when once it has arrived at its highest form of freedom, namely, subjectivity, first conceives this thought of God as subjective, and reaches first this antithesis of subjectivity and objectivity.
Anselm expressed the nature of this transition in the following fashion. The idea of God is that He is absolutely perfect. If accordingly we think of God only as idea, then we find that what is merely subjective, and merely represented in the form of an idea, is defective, and not perfect; for that is the more perfect which is not merely represented as an idea, but also is, really is. Therefore, since God is what is most perfect, He is not idea merely, but, on the contrary, He is possessed of actuality or reality.
The later, broader, and more rational form which represents the development of this thought of Anselm asserts that the conception or Notion of God implies that He is the Substance of all realities, the most real Essence. But Being also is reality, therefore Being belongs to Him.
It has been urged against this that Being is no reality, that it does not belong to the reality of a notion. Reality in a notion or conception implies determinate content in a notion, but Being adds nothing to the notion or to the content of the notion. Kant has put it in the following plausible form: I form an idea of a hundred thalers; but the notion or conception, the determinateness of the content is the same whether I form an idea of them, or whether I actually possess them.
As against the first proposition that Being ought to follow from the Notion in general, it has been urged that Notion and Being are different from each other: the Notion thus exists for itself, while Being is different. Being must come to the Notion from the outside, from elsewhere. Being is not involved in the Notion. This can be put in a very plausible way by the aid of the hundred thalers.
In ordinary life an idea of a hundred thalers is called a notion or conception. That is not a notion at all in which you may have any kind of determination of content. It is certainly true that Being may not belong to an abstract sense-idea such as blue, or to any determinateness of the Understanding which happens to be in my mind; but then this ought not to be called a notion.
The Notion, and still more the absolute Notion, the Notion in-and-for-itself, the Notion of God, is to be taken for itself, and this Notion contains Being as a determinate characteristic. Being is a form of the determinateness of the Notion. This may easily be shown to be the case in two ways.
First of all, the Notion is essentially the Universal which determines itself, which particularises itself; it is what has the active power of differentiation, of particularising and determining itself, of positing a finitude, and of negating this its own finitude, and of being through the negation of this finitude identical with itself.
This is the Notion in general. This is just what the Notion of God, the absolute Notion, God, really is. God as Spirit or as love means that God particularises Himself, begets the Son, creates the world, an Other of Himself, and possesses Himself, is identical with Himself, in this Other.
In the Notion in general, and still more in the Idea, what, in fact, we see is, that through the negation of the particularisation, the positing of which is at the same time the work of the activity which He Himself is, He is identical with Himself, relates Himself to Himself.
The primary question is, What is Being? what is this attribute, this determinateness, namely, reality? Being is nothing but the unutterable, the inconceivable; it is not that concrete something which the Notion is, but merely the abstraction of reference to self. We may say, it is immediacy, Being is the Immediate in general, and conversely the Immediate is Being, it is in relation to itself, that is, the mediation is negated.
This determination, namely, reference to self, or immediacy, accordingly directly exists for itself in the Notion in general, and it is involved in the absolute Notion, in the Notion of God, that He is reference to self. This abstract reference to self is directly found in the Notion itself.
The Notion is what has life, what is self-mediating; and so Being, too, is one of its characteristics. Being is different from the Notion to this extent, that Being is not the entire Notion, but is only one of its characteristics, merely that simple aspect of the Notion in virtue of which it is at home with itself, is self-identity.
Being is the determination which is found in the Notion as something different from the Notion, because the Notion is the whole of which Being is only one determination. The other point is that the Notion contains this determination in itself, this latter is one of its determinations; but Being is also different from the Notion, because the Notion is the totality. In so far as they are different, mediation forms a necessary element in their union.
They are not immediately identical; all immediacy is true and real only in so far as it is mediation within self, and conversely all mediation, in so far as it is immediacy in itself, has reference to self. The Notion is different from Being, and the peculiar quality of the difference lies in this that the Notion absorbs and abolishes it.
The Notion is the totality, represented by the movement, the process, whereby it makes itself objective. The Notion as such, as distinct from Being, is something purely subjective, and that implies a defect. The Notion, however, is all that is deepest and highest. The very idea of the Notion implies that it has to do away with this defect of subjectivity, with this distinction between itself and Being, and has to objectify itself. It is itself the act of producing itself as something which has Being, as something objective.
Whenever we think of the Notion, we must give up the idea that it is something which we only possess, and construct within ourselves. The Notion is the Soul, the final-end of an object, of what has life; what we call Soul is the Notion, and in Spirit, in consciousness, the Notion as such attains to existence as a free Notion existing in its subjectivity as distinct from its reality as such.
The sun, the animal is the Notion merely, but has not the Notion; for them the Notion has not become objective. It is in consciousness and not in the sun that we find that division which is called I, the existing Notion, the Notion in its subjective reality, and I, this Notion, am the subjective.
No man, however, is content with his mere self-hood. The Ego is active, and this activity shows itself in objectifying self, in giving to it reality, definite existence. In its more extended and concrete signification, this activity of the Notion is impulse. All sense of satisfaction arises through this process whereby subjectivity is done away with, and what is inward and subjective is posited as at the same time outward, objective, and real, that process by which the unity of the merely subjective and merely objective is brought about, and the two are stripped of their one-sidedness.
There is nothing so well illustrated by all that goes on in the world as the abolition of the antithesis of subjective and objective, whereby the unity of the two is effected.
The thought of Anselm, therefore, so far as its content is concerned, is the truer and more necessary thought; but the form of the proof deduced from it is certainly defective in the same way as the modes of mediation previously referred to. This unity of Notion and Being is hypothetical, and its defect consists just in the very fact of its being hypothetical.
What is presupposed is that the pure Notion, the Notion in-and-for-itself, the Notion of God, is, involves Being also.
If we compare this content with faith or immediate knowledge, we shall find that the content is the same as that of Anselm’s presupposition.
When the matter is regarded from this standpoint of immediate knowledge, what is said is this. It is a fact of consciousness that I have the idea of God, and along with this idea, Being must be given, so that Being is bound up with the content of the idea. If it is said that we believe it, that we know it immediately, then the unity of the idea and Being is expressed in the form of the presupposition just exactly as it is in Anselm’s argument, and we have not got one bit further. This is the presupposition we everywhere meet with in Spinoza too. He defines the Absolute Cause, Substance, as that which cannot be thought of as not existing, the conception of which involves existence; that is, the idea of God is directly bound up with Being.
This inseparableness of Notion and Being is found in an absolute form only in the case of God. The finitude of things consists in the fact that the Notion, and the determinate form of the Notion, and the Being of the Notion, are essentially different. The finite is what does not correspond to its notion or rather to the Notion.
We have the notion of Soul; the reality, the Being is represented by the corporeal form. Man is mortal; we express this truth also by saying, Soul and body can part. There we have the fact of separation, but in the pure Notion we have the inseparableness referred to.
When we say that every impulse is an example of the Notion which realises itself, we are saying what is formally correct; the impulse which has received satisfaction is undoubtedly infinite so far as the form is concerned. But the impulse has a content, and so far as the determinate character of its content is concerned, it is finite and limited; in this respect it does not correspond to the Notion, to the pure Notion.
This is the explanation of what is involved in the standpoint of the knowledge of the Notion. What was considered last was the knowledge of God, the certainty of the existence of God in general. The essential thought in this connection is the following. When we have knowledge of an object, the object is before us; we are directly related to it. But this immediacy involves mediation, what was called the act of rising to God, the fact that the human spirit comes to consider the finite as non-existent.
By means of this negation Man’s spirit raises itself to God, brings itself into harmony with God. The conclusion: I know that God is, is the simple relation which has originated in this negation.
IN THE SPHERE of revealed religion what we have first to consider is the abstract Notion or conception of God. This free, pure revealed Notion is what forms the basis. The manifestation of the Notion, its Being for an Other, is its existence, and the region in which this existence shows itself is the finite spirit. This is the second point — finite Spirit and finite consciousness are concrete. The chief thing in this religion is to attain to a knowledge of the process whereby God manifests Himself in the finite spirit, and is identical with Himself in it. The third point is the identity of the Notion and existence. Identity here is, strictly speaking, an awkward expression, for what we have in God is essentially life.
In the forms hitherto treated of we advanced from what was lower to what was higher, and took as the starting-point one definite form of existence regarded in its different aspects. Being was first taken in its most comprehensive aspect as contingent Being, in the Cosmological Proof. The truth of contingent Being is Being necessary in-and-for-itself. Existence was then further conceived of as involving relations of ends, and this supplied us with the Teleological Proof. Here there is an advance, a beginning from existence as actually given and present. These proofs consequently form part of the finite determination of God. The Notion of God is that of something boundless, not boundless in the bad sense, but rather as representing what has at the same time the most determinate character possible, pure self-determination. These first proofs belong to the domain of finite connection, of finite determination, since we start with what is given. Here, on the other hand, the starting-point is the free, pure Notion, and it is accordingly at this stage that we meet with the Ontological Proof of the existence of God. It constitutes the abstract metaphysical basis of this stage. It was first discovered in Christendom by Anselm of Canterbury. It was then further developed by all the later philosophers, by Descartes, Leibnitz, and Wolff, yet always along with the other proofs, though it alone is the true one. The Ontological Proof starts from the Notion. The Notion is considered to be something subjective, and is defined as something opposed to the object and to reality. Here it constitutes the starting-point, and what we have got to do is to show that Being, too, belongs to this Notion. The exact method of procedure is as follows. The Notion of God is first of all described, and it is shown that He cannot be conceived of unless as including Being in Himself. In so far as Being is separated from the Notion, God exists in a merely subjective way in our thought. As thus subjective He is imperfect, and imperfection belongs only to finite Spirit. It has to be shown that it is not only our notion which exists, but that He exists independent of our thinking. Anselm states the proof in the following simple form: God is what is most perfect, beyond which nothing can be thought of as existing; if God is merely an idea, then He is not what is most perfect. This, however, is in contradiction with the first statement; for we consider that as perfect which is not merely an idea, but which is also possessed of Being. If God is merely subjective, we could bring forward something higher which would be possessed of Being as well. This is further developed as follows. We begin with what is most perfect, and this is defined as the most real Essence, as the Substance of all realities. This has been termed possibility. The Notion as subjective, since it is distinguished from Being, is merely what is possible, or at all events it ought to be what is possible. According to the old Logic, possibility exists only where it can be shown that no contradiction exists. Realities are, in accordance with this idea, to be considered as existing in God only in their affirmative aspect, as limitless, and in such a way that negation is supposed to be eliminated. But it is easy to prove that in this case all that is left is the abstraction of something which is one with itself. For when we speak of realities we mean to imply that they represent different characteristics, such as wisdom, righteousness, almighty power, omniscience. These characteristics are attributes which may easily be shown to be in contradiction with each other. Goodness is not righteousness; absolute power is in contradiction with wisdom; for this latter presupposes final-ends. Power, on the other hand, means the limitlessness of negation and production. If, as is demanded, the Notion is not to contradict itself, all determinateness must be dropped, for every judgment or difference advances to the state of opposition. God is the Substance of all realities, it is said, and since one of these is Being, Being is consequently united with the Notion. This proof maintained itself until recent times, and we find it worked out particularly in Mendelssohn’s “Morning Hours.” Spinoza defines the Notion or conception of God by saying that it is that which cannot be conceived of apart from Being. The finite is something whose existence does not correspond to the Notion. The species is realised in existing individuals, but these are transitory; the species is the Universal for itself. In the case of the finite, existence does not correspond to the Notion. On the other hand, in the case of the Infinite, which is determined within itself, the reality must correspond to the Notion; this is the Idea, the unity of subject and object. Kant criticised this proof, and the objections he urged against it were as follows. If God is defined as the Substance of all realities, then Being does not belong to Him, for Being is no reality. It makes no difference to the Notion or conception whether it exists or does not exist, it remains the same. Already in Anselm’s day this objection was urged by a monk who said, “The fact of my forming an idea of anything does not therefore imply that the thing exists.” Kant maintains that a hundred thalers really remain the same whether I merely form an idea of them or actually possess them; consequently Being is not a reality, or real predicate, since nothing is added by it to the Notion. It may be granted that Being is not any determinate content; all the same, nothing certainly should be added to the Notion. (We may remark in passing that to speak of every wretched form of existence as a notion is to go on quite wrong lines.) On the contrary, it should be rid of the defect attaching to it in that it is merely something subjective, and is not the Idea. The Notion which is only something subjective, and is divorced from Being, is a nullity. In the form of the proof as given by Anselm, the infinitude consists in the very fact that it is not one-sided, something purely subjective to which Being does not attach. The Understanding keeps Being and the Notion strictly apart, and considers each as self-identical. But even according to the ordinary idea the Notion apart from Being is considered one-sided and untrue, and so, too, Being in which there is no Notion is looked on as notionless Being, Being which is inconceivable. This antithesis which is found in finitude cannot have any place in connection with the Infinite or God.
But it is the following circumstance which makes the proof unsatisfactory. That most perfect and most real existence is in fact a presupposition measured by which Being for itself and the Notion for itself are one-sided. Descartes and Spinoza defined God as the cause of Himself. Notion and existence form an identity; in other words, God as Notion cannot be conceived of without Being. What is unsatisfactory in this view is that we have here a presupposition, and this means that the Notion measured by this standard of hypothetical necessity must be something subjective.
The finite and subjective, however, is not finite only as measured by the standard supplied by that presupposition. It is finite in itself, and is consequently the antithesis of itself. It is the unsolved contradiction. Being is supposed to be distinct from the Notion. We may imagine we can regard this latter as strictly subjective, as finite; but the essential characteristic of Being is in the Notion itself. This finitude of subjectivity is done away with in the Notion itself, and the unity of Being and the Notion is not a presupposition relatively to the latter, and by which it is measured. Being in its immediacy is contingent, and we have seen that its truth is necessity. The Notion necessarily involves Being, and this is simple reference to self, the absence of mediation. If we consider the Notion, we find it to be that in which all difference is absorbed, and in which all determinations are merely ideal. This ideality is mediation or difference, which has been absorbed and removed, perfect clearness, pure transparency, being at home with self. The freedom of the Notion is just absolute reference to self, identity which is also immediacy, unity without mediation. The Notion thus has Being in itself potentially. Its very meaning is that it does away with its one-sidedness. The idea that Being can be separated from the Notion is a mere fancy. When Kant says that it is impossible to extract reality from the Notion, he is thinking of the Notion as something finite. But the finite is just what annuls itself; and if we were to think of the Notion in this way as divorced from Being, we should just have that very reference to self which Being essentially is.
The Notion, however, has not Being in itself potentially only. It is not seen to be there merely by us; but, on the contrary, the Notion is actual Being, Being for itself also. It abolishes its subjectivity, and objectifies itself. Man realises his ends; that is, what was, to begin with, merely ideal loses its one-sidedness, and is consequently made into something which has Being. The Notion shows itself eternally in that activity whereby Being is posited as identical with itself. In perception, feeling, &c., we have outward objects before us; but we take them up into ourselves, and thus the objects are ideal in us. The Notion is thus the continuous act whereby it abolishes its difference. When we regard closely the nature of the Notion, we see that this identity with Being is no longer a presupposition, but a result. The course of procedure is as follows: the Notion makes itself objective, turns itself into reality, and is thus the truth, the unity of subject and object. God is an immortal living Being, says Plato, whose body and soul are united in one. Those who separate the two sides do not get beyond what is finite and untrue.
The standpoint which we here occupy is the Christian one. We have here the Notion of God in its entire freedom. This Notion is identical with Being. Being is the poorest of all abstractions; but the Notion is not so poor as not to contain this determination in it. We have not to deal with Being in the poverty of abstraction, in immediacy in its bad form, but with Being as the Being of God, as absolutely concrete Being, distinguished from God. The consciousness of finite Spirit is concrete Being, the material for the realisation of the Notion of God. Here it is not a question of any addition of Being to the Notion, or merely of a unity of the Notion and Being — such expressions are awkward and misleading. The unity is rather to be conceived of as an absolute process, as the living movement of God, and this means that the two sides are distinguished from each other, while the process is thought of as that absolute, continuous act of eternal self-production. Here we have the concrete and popular idea of God as Spirit. The Notion of Spirit is the Notion which has Being in-and-for-itself, that is to say, knowledge. This infinite Notion is negative reference to self. When thus posited it is judgment, the act of distinguishing, self-differentiation. But what is thus differentiated, and which at first appears as something outward, devoid of Spirit, outside of God, is really identical with the Notion. The development of this Idea is the absolute truth. In the Christian religion it is known that God has revealed Himself, and it is the very nature of God to reveal Himself, and to reveal is to differentiate. What is revealed is just that God is the revealed God.
Religion must be something for all men; for those who have so purified their thought that they know what exists in the pure element of thought, and who have arrived at a philosophical knowledge of what God is, as well as for such as have not got beyond feeling and ordinary ideas.
Man is not merely pure thought. On the contrary, thought manifests itself as perception or picture-thought, or in the form of ordinary ideas. The absolute truth which is revealed to Man must therefore exist for him as a being who forms general ideas and sensuous images, who has feelings and sensations. This is the mark by which religion in general is distinguished from philosophy. Philosophy thinks what otherwise exists only for the ordinary idea and sensuous perception. Man who thus forms general ideas, is in his character as Man a thinking being also, and the substance of religion comes to him as a being who thinks. It is only a thinking being that can have a religion, and to think is also to form ideas, though the former act alone is the free form of truth. The Understanding thinks too, but it does not get beyond identity; for it the Notion is Notion, and Being is Being. These two one-sided categories always keep this one-sided form, so far as it is concerned. In their true nature, on the other hand, these finite forms are no longer held to be inherently identical on the ground that they are, but rather they are considered to be merely moments of a totality.
Those who find fault with philosophy for thinking religion, for stating religion in terms of thought, don’t know what they want. Hatred and vanity here come directly into play under the outward guise of humility. True humility consists in having the spirit absorbed in the truth, in losing ourselves in what is most inward, in having within us the object, and the object only. Thus anything subjective which may still be present in feeling, disappears. We have to consider the Idea from the purely speculative point of view, and to justify its claims as against the Understanding, and against it as being hostile to all content of religion whatsoever. This content is called a mystery, because it is something hidden from the Understanding; for the latter does not get the length of the process which this unity is, and thus it is that everything speculative, everything philosophical, is for the Understanding a mystery.
The Criticism
Am Kupfergraben 4a, Berlin, Hegel’s home in Berlin from 1820 until his death in 1831
Plaque commemorating the philosopher’s residence at Am Kupfergraben