Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/179

 mediated, as the son. If we start from the father, then the father is, in the first instance, what is immediate, and the son, as the one begotten, is what is mediated. Everything that lives, however, inasmuch as it is a begetter, and is determined accordingly as something which begins, something immediate, is also something begotten.

Immediateness means, in fact, Being. It means this simple reference to self; it is immediate, in so far as we put the relation out of sight. If we define this existence as being one of the related sides in the relation—as effect—then what is without relation is recognised as something mediated. In like manner the cause only exists in virtue of having an effect, for otherwise it would be no cause at all. Only in this relation, and therefore only in this mediation, is it a cause. Everything that exists (we do not as yet speak of mediation with self), since it requires an Other for its being, that is to say, for its immediacy, is in so far mediated.

The sphere of Logic is that of the Dialectic in which Being is considered as that which, if taken as something immediate, is untrue. The truth of Being is Becoming; Becoming is a single determination, self-related; it is a something immediate, an entirely simple idea, but it contains both determinations—Being and Not-Being. There is no Immediate; the truth rather being that it is a mere scholastic notion. Only in this bad sense is there any such thing as immediacy.

It is just the same with regard to immediate knowledge, which is a particular mode, a kind of immediacy; there is no immediate knowledge. “Immediate knowledge” exists where we have not the consciousness of mediation; all the same, it is mediated. We have feelings, and this is something immediate; we have perception, and that appears under the form of immediacy. When, however, we have to do with thought-determinations, with the categories of thought, we must not stop