Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/153

 substance is another internal contradiction, because what is simple cannot be two or many; only with what is not simple do we get distinction and plurality. The addition to the word “substances” of “simple, spiritual, more or less endowed with consciousness and reason,” introduces another internal contradiction, by suddenly joining to the simple concept that of consciousness and reason, according to the degree of which this something, which is called simple spiritual substances, is divided.

The words, “To admit that God has in himself the substance of the first kind,” to be consistent, ought to have been, “To admit that the one God is complex, material substances,” which is the merest absurdity, is an admission that the one God is a multiplicity of varied substances, of which it is impossible to speak. The words, “We are of necessity forced to assume the substance of the latter kind in God, through the contemplation of the works of his creation and foresight, in which traces of the highest reason are visible,” signify not at all that God is a spirit, but that God is the highest reason. Thus, in examining these words, it turns out that, instead of saying that God is a spirit, they say that God is the highest intelligence, and in confirmation of these words. are quoted the words of St. John Damascene, who says a third thing, namely, that the Deity is simple.

What is remarkable is that the conception of God as a spirit, in the sense of opposing it to everything material, is indubitable to me and to every believer, and has clearly been established in the first chapters about the comprehensibility of God, and that cannot be proved. But, for some reason, this proof is attempted, and blasphemous words about the investigation of the essence of God are pronounced, and the argument ends by proving that, instead of being a spirit, God is reason, or that the Deity is simple and has but one action. What is all that proved for? Why, in order, when the need for it shall