Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/193

 determinateness as something external, immediate, as a determinateness of God Himself, is His absolute power, which is wisdom, the definite moments of which are goodness and righteousness.

Goodness consists in the fact that the world is: Being does not belong to it, as Being is here reduced to the condition of a moment, and is only a Being which has been posited or created. This act of dividing, of differentiation, represents the eternal goodness of God. What is thus distinguished from God has no right to be; it is external to the One, something manifold, and because of this, something limited, finite, whose essential character is not to be, but the goodness of God consists just in the fact that it is. Inasmuch as it is something which has been posited, it also passes away, is only appearance. God only is Being, the truly real; Being which excludes any of its elements, Being outside of God, has no right of existence.

God can be a Creator in the true sense only in so far as He is subjectivity, for as such He is free, and His determinate character, His self-determination, is set free. It is only what is free that can have its determinations standing over against itself as free and can give them freedom. This differentiation, whose totality is represented by the world, this Being, is The Good.

The Being of the world, however, is only the Being of Power, or, to put it otherwise, the positive reality and independence or self-existence of the world is not its own self-existence, but the self-existence of Power. The world accordingly must, in relation to the Power, be thought of as something incomplete in itself. The one side is represented by the manifoldness of the differences, the infinite realm of definite existence, the other side accordingly by the substantiality of the world, though this quality does not attach to the world itself, but is rather the identity of the Essence with itself. The world does not maintain itself independently; on the contrary, its Being-for-self, its real existence, is the