Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/103

 posits its negation as negative, that is to say, which annuls it. This double movement is subjectivity. This is no longer that which Brahma is; in Brahma these differences merely vanish, or, in so far as the difference is posited, it is found as an independent god outside of Brahma.

The first and essentially universal form of subjectivity is not the perfectly free, purely spiritual subjectivity, but is still affected by Nature. It is thus, it is true, universal Power, but power which merely exists implicitly, such as we have hitherto met with. As subjectivity it is, on the contrary, posited actual power, and is so conceived of when it is taken as exclusive subjectivity.

The distinction lies between power which is implicit and power so far as it is subjectivity. This last is posited power, is posited as power existent in its own right. We have already had power under every form. As a first fundamental determination it is a crude power over what has a bare existence; then it is the inner element only, and the distinctions or differences appear as self-sustained existences outside of it; existences which have, it is true, proceeded out of it, but which outside of it are independent, and which would have vanished, in so far as they were comprehended in it. Just as distinctions vanish in Brahma, in this abstraction, when self-consciousness says, “I am Brahma,” and from that moment everything that is divine, all that is good, has vanished in him, so the abstraction has no content, and the latter, in so far as it is outside of it, moves unsteadily about in a state of independence. In relation to particular existences, power is the active agent, the basis; but it remains the inner element merely, and acts in a universal way only. That which universal power brings forth, in so far as it is implicit, is also the Universal, the Laws of Nature; these belong to the power which is potentially existent. This power acts; it is implicit power, its working likewise is implicit, it acts