Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/166

 last mentioned may, on the contrary, exist in a permanent form. This second class, that of those things which appear as existing independently, is implicitly posited, not by means of the Power of the end, but by means of a higher essentially existing Power which conforms them to the end.

This is the general conception or notion of Power which acts in accordance with ends. The truth of the world consists in this Power; it is the Power of Wisdom, the absolutely universal Power, and since it is the world which is its manifestation, the truth of the world is the completely realised essential existence of the manifestation of a wise Power.

We have now more particularly to consider the proof of the existence of God which is based on this thought. Two points call for notice. The wise Power, namely, is the absolute Process in itself; it is the power of producing effects, of being active. This wise Power has by its very nature to posit a world which has ends in itself; its nature is to manifest itself, to pass into actual definite existence. This actual existence is, speaking generally, the positing of the difference, of the manifoldness which attaches to external existence. We thus get the element of difference in a more important and more essential specialised form. Power produces what it does produce in its character as wisdom, what is produced is the difference; this means that the one is implicitly an end and the other a means for the first; it is merely something in conformity with an end, contingent, and not an end in itself. This differentiation, namely, that the one is the means of the other, is the one side. The other side in this mediation consists in this, that the mutual relation between these two sides is Power, or, to express it differently, it is just this which characterises those on the one side as ends and the others as means, and is thus the maintenance or preservation of the ends. This aspect of the differentiation is Creation; it proceeds from the Notion; the wise