Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/20

 this, and is made to sensuous consciousness. If God were present only in feeling, then men would be no higher than the beasts. It is true that He does exist for feeling too, but only in the region of appearance or manifestation. Nor does He exist for consciousness of the rationalistic type. Reflection is certainly thought too; but it has at the same time an accidental character, and because of this its content is something chosen at random, and is limited. God is certainly not a content of this kind. He thus exists essentially for thought. It is necessary to put the matter thus when we start from what is subjective, from Man. But this is the very truth we reach, too, when we start from God. Spirit exists for the spirit for which it does exist, only in so far as it reveals and differentiates itself, and this is the eternal Idea, thinking Spirit, Spirit in the element of its freedom. In this region God is the self-revealer, just because He is Spirit; but He is not yet present as outward manifestation. That God exists for Spirit is thus an essential principle.

Spirit is what thinks. Within this pure thought the relation is of an immediate kind, and there exists no difference between the two elements to differentiate them. Nothing comes between them. Thought is pure unity with itself, from which all that is obscure and dark has disappeared. This kind of thought may also be called pure intuition, as being the simple form of the activity of thought, so that there is nothing between the subject and the object, as these two do not yet really exist. This kind of thought has no limitation, it is universal activity, and its content is no other than the Universal itself; it is pure pulsation within itself.

2. It, however, passes further into the stage of absolute Diremption. How does this differentiation come about? Thought is actu, unlimited. The element of difference in its most immediate form consists in this that the two sides which we have seen to be the two sorts of modes in which the principle appears, show their