Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/26

 distinction already spontaneously effaces itself, for the masculine and neuter genders have many cases which are similar. In another respect, too, no great emphasis is to be laid upon this distinction, because Brahma as personified is merely superficially personified in such a manner that the content still remains this simple substance.

And now distinctions appear in this simple Substance, and it is worth noting that these distinctions present themselves in such a way that they are determined in accordance with the instinct of the Notion. The First is totality generally as One, taken quite abstractly; the Second is determinateness, differentiation generally; and the Third, in accordance with the true determination, is that the differences are led back again into unity, into concrete unity.

Conceived of in accordance with its abstract form, this Trinity of the Absolute is, when it is formless, merely Brahma,—that is, empty Essence. From the point of view of its determinations it is a Three, but in a unity only, so that this threeness is merely a unity.

If we define this more accurately and speak of it under another form, the Second means that differentiations, different Powers exist: the differentiation, however, has no rights as against the one Substance, the absolute unity; and in so far as it has no rights it may be called eternal goodness, implying that what has determinate character,—this manifestation of the Divine,—should indeed exist; that differentiation too should attain to this, that it is. This is the goodness through which what is posited by the Power as a semblance or show of Being acquires momentary Being. In the Power it is absorbed, yet goodness permits it to exist independently.

Upon this Second follows the Third—that is, righteousness, implying that the existing determinate element is not, that the finite attains to its end, its destiny, its right, which is to be changed, to be transformed, in