Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/215

 and in this again the moment of the finite, yet this separate existence of the finite must in turn annul itself. For it is God’s; it is His Other, and exists notwithstanding in the definite form of the Other of God. It is the Other and the not Other; it dissolves or cancels its own self; it is not it itself, but an Other, it destroys itself. By this means, however, the “otherness” has wholly vanished in God, and in it God recognises Himself; and in this way He maintains Himself for Himself as His own result through His own act.

In accordance with this way of regarding the matter, the two infinites may now be distinguished, namely, the true infinite from the merely bad one of the understanding. Thus, then, the finite is a moment of the Divine life.

(c.) The transition to the speculative conception of religion.

For the logically developed and rational consideration of the finite, the simple forms of a proposition have no longer any value. God is infinite, I am finite; these are false, bad expressions, forms which do not adequately correspond to that which the Idea, the nature of the real object, is. The finite is not that which is, in like manner the infinite is not fixed; these determinations are only moments of the process. It is equally true that God exists as finite and the Ego as infinite. The “is,” or exists, which is regarded in such propositions as something firmly fixed, has, when understood in its true sense, no other meaning than that of activity, vitality, and spirituality.

Nor are predicates adequate for definition here, and least of all those which are one-sided and transient. But, on the contrary, what is true, what is the Idea, exists only as movement. Thus God is this movement within Himself, and thereby alone is He the living God. But this separate existence of the finite must not be retained; it must, on the contrary, be abrogated. God