Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/348

 the Father, and conversely in Him only is God revealed. But in this Other God is at home with Himself, does not go outside of Himself; He relates Himself to Himself; and since this is no longer a relation toward what is other than Himself, mediation is done away with.

God is therefore that which is inherently and absolutely necessary—necessary in and for itself; this determination is the absolute foundation. If even this be not sufficient, God must be conceived of as Substance.

We now come to the other aspect of the subject; it is the converse one, the relation in which Substance stands to the finite. In the act of rising up from the finite to Substance there is a mediation which was done away with in the result, posited as non-existent. In the turning round of Substance toward the many, the finite, and so forth, this annulled mediation is to be taken up again, but in such a way that in the movement of the result it comes to be posited as null; that is to say, it is not only the result which must be apprehended, but in that result the Whole and its process. Now when the Whole is apprehended in this manner, it is said that Substance has accidents, has the infinite manifolduess which belongs to this Substance as a form of Being which passes away. That which is perishes. But death is just as much again the beginning of life; the perishing or passing away is the beginning of the rise of existence, and there is only a veering round from Being into Not-Being, and vice versâ. This is the alternation of accidentality, and Substance is now the unity of this alternation itself. What is perennial is this alternation; what is thus alternation and at the same time unity is the substantial element, the necessity which translates the origination into passing away, and vice versâ. Substance is the absolute power or force of Being; Being belongs to it of right; but it is likewise the unity of the act of veering round, when Being veers round into Not-Being; it is again,