Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/362

 both are to be regarded as things posited, as dependent for their existence on something else. Neither of the two can be characterised simply as something which continues to begin or is permanently original, but must show itself in the character of something which passes over into the other, i.e., it must show itself to be something posited. This transition has two opposite meanings, each is represented as a moment, i.e., as something which passes over from immediacy to the Other, so that each is something posited. On the other hand, it has the signification also of something which produces the Other, inasmuch as it posits the Other, or brings it forward into actual existence. Thus one of these two elements represents movement; but so, too, does the other.

If, accordingly, the transition to Being is to be exhibited in the Notion, it is necessary to point out, to begin with, that the characterisation or determination we call Being is of an utterly poor kind. It is abstract equality with self, that last form of abstraction which is indeed affirmation, but affirmation in its most abstract form, purely indeterminate, characterless immediacy. If there were nothing more in the Notion it would be necessary to put into it at least this most extreme form of abstraction, namely, that the Notion is. Even when it is defined simply as infinitude, or with a more concrete meaning as the unity of the Universal and the Particular, as universality which particularises itself and thus returns into itself, this negation of the negative, this reference to self, is Being taken in a purely abstract sense. This identity with self, this characterisation just described, is directly contained in the Notion as an essential element.

Still it is necessary to state that the transition from the Notion to Being has a rich and varied character, and contains what most deeply concerns reason. The understanding of this relation between the Notion and Being is something, too, which very specially concerns our time. We must indicate more definitely the reason why this