Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/143

 B.

THE METAPHYSICAL CONCEPTION OR NOTION OF THIS SPHERE.

It is the pure abstract thought-determination which forms the basis here. We abstract as yet from idea or mental representation, as also from the necessity of the realisation of the Notion, a necessity which does not exactly belong to idea, but is rather one which the Notion itself renders necessary. Here we have the metaphysical notion in its relation to the form taken by the Proofs of the Existence of God. The special characteristic of the metaphysical notion, as contrasted with the foregoing, lies in this, that in the case of the latter we started from the unity of the Infinite and the finite. The Infinite was absolute negativity, undeveloped Power, and the thought involved in the first sphere and its essence were limited to this definition of infinitude. In that sphere the notion, so far as we are concerned, was undoubtedly that of the unity of the finite and the Infinite; but in reference to this stage itself, the Essence was defined simply as the Infinite. This latter forms the basis, and the finite was merely added to it; and just for this reason the determination assumed a natural aspect, and was accordingly the Religion of Nature, because the form required natural existence in order to show itself in a definite actual shape. The Religion of Nature already proved also the inadequacy of what is immediately external to express what is internal. In the conception of the Immeasurable it passed beyond the immediate identity of the natural and the Absolute, and also beyond that of immediate Being and Essence. But the external form when stretched out to the Immeasurable snaps, as it were, natural Being vanishes, and begins to exist for itself as the Universal. Infinitude is not yet, however, immanent determination, and, in order to represent it, use is