Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/138

 must proceed to ascertain by examining into the Notion (Begriff) itself, how far the Universal receives the determination or attribute of Being or existence.

We must turn to logic for a definition of Being. Being is Universality taken in its empty and most abstract sense; it is pure relation to self, without further reaction either in an outward or an inward direction. Being is Universality as abstract Universality. The Universal is essentially identity with itself; Being is this too, it is simple. The determination of the Universal, it is true, directly involves the relation to particulars; this particularity may be conceived of as outside the Universal, or, more truly, as inside it; for the Universal is also this relation to itself, this permeation of the Particular. Being, however, discards all relation, every determination which is concrete; it is without further reflection, without relation to what is other than itself. It is in this way that Being is contained in the Universal; and when I say “the Universal is,” I merely express its dry, pure, abstract relation to itself, this barren immediateness which Being is. The Universal is no Immediate in this sense; it must also be a Particular; the Universal must come to be in the Particular itself: this bringing of itself to the Particular does not represent what is abstract and immediate. By the term “Being,” on the contrary, we express the abstract Immediate, this barren relation to self. Thus when I say “This object is,” I express the utmost extreme of arid abstraction; it is the emptiest, most sterile determination possible.

To know is to think, and this is the Universal, and has in itself the characteristic of the abstract Universal, the immediateness of being: this is the meaning of immediate knowledge.

We are thus in the region of abstract logic; it always happens so when we think we are on concrete ground, the ground of immediate consciousness. But this latter is the very poorest possible soil for thoughts, and those