Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/190

. This, therefore, is the form taken by the Divine self-determination, the mode of particularisation. It cannot blunder, for wisdom is necessary to the very idea of it. It is not, however, any kind of particularisation of God in Himself, otherwise God would be known as Spirit. The particularisation, just because God is One, attaches to the other aspect of existence. This particularisation is, to begin with, the Divine act of characterisation in general, and is thus Creation. This positing of the world is not transitory, but, on the contrary, what proceeds out of God preserves the character of something posited, of the creature, in fact. Thus what is created has upon it the mark of something which has no independence. This is the fundamental characteristic, and one which remains attached to it because God is conceived of as Subject, as infinite Power. Here Power exists only for the One, and thus it follows that what is particular is merely something negative, something posited, as compared with the subject.

Second Determination.—This determination means that God is hypothetically Subject. If He is not, then Creation is a vague popular conception which readily suggests the mechanical and technical methods of production used by man, and this is an idea which we must keep out of our minds. God is the First: His act of creation is an eternal creating, in which He is not a result, but that which originates. When He is conceived of in a higher way, namely, as Spirit, He is the self-creating, and does not proceed out of Himself, being both beginning and result. Here, however, God is not conceived of as Spirit. Human production, technical production, is an external process. The Subject, what is First, becomes active, and connects itself with something other than itself, and thus comes to stand in an external relation to the material which has to be manipulated, which offers resistance and has to be overcome. Both actually exist as objects which have a mutual relation to each