Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/14

 determination is the taking back of the manifold determinateness of existence into the unity of inner self-determination. This concentration of self-determination contains the beginning of Spirituality.

1. The Universal, as determining its own self, and not merely as a multitude of rules, is Thought, exists as Thought. It is in our thoughts alone that Nature, the ruling Power which brings forth everything, exists as the Universal, as this One Essence, as this One Power which exists for itself. What we have before us in Nature is this Universal, but not as a Universal. It is in our thought that the truth of Nature is brought into prominence on its own account as Idea, or more abstractly as something having a universal character. Universality is, however, in its very nature Thought, and as self-determining is the source of all determination. But at the stage at which we now are, and where the Universal appears for the first time as the determining agent, as a Principle, it is not as yet Spirit, but abstract Universality generally. The Universal being known in this way as Thought, it remains as such shut up within itself. It is the source of all power, but does not externalise or make itself manifest as such.

2. Now to Spirit belongs the power of differentiation and the full development of the difference. Of the system of this complete development, the concrete unfolding of Thought on its own account, and that particular unfolding which as manifestation or appearance is Nature and the spiritual world, form an inherent part. Since, however, the Principle which makes its appearance at the present stage has not as yet got so far as to permit of this unfolding taking place within that principle itself, it being rather held fast in simple abstract concentration only, the unfolding, the fulness of the actual Idea, is found outside of the Principle, and consequently differentiation and manifoldness are abandoned to the wildest, most outward forms of imagination. The