Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/22

 characterised as universal Spirit which particularises itself. This represents the absolute truth, and that religion is the true one which possesses this content.

Spirit is the process referred to; it is movement, life; its nature is to differentiate itself, to give itself a definite character, to determine itself; and the first form of the differentiation consists in this, that Spirit appears as the universal Idea itself. This Universal contains the entire Idea, but it only contains it, it is the Idea potentially only.

In the act of judgment or separation, the Other, what is put in contrast with the Universal, the Particular, is God as that which is distinguished from the Universal, but as implying that what is thus distinguished represents His entire Idea in-and-for-itself. Thus these two characteristics mean the same thing in reference to each other—mean that there is an identity between them, that they are one, that this difference is not merely done away with implicitly and that we are merely aware of this, but that the fact of their being the same has been brought forward into actuality or posited, and that these differences are done away with in so far as this differentiation just means that the difference is actually shown to be no difference, and thus the One is at home with itself in the Other.

The fact that this is so is just what is meant by Spirit, or, expressed in terms of feeling, by eternal Love. The Holy Spirit is eternal love. When we say God is love, we are expressing a very great and true thought; but it would be unreasonable merely to take this in such a simple way as a simple characterisation of God without analysing the meaning of love.

For love implies a distinguishing between two, and yet these two are, as a matter of fact, not distinguished from one another. Love, this sense of being outside of myself, is the feeling and consciousness of this identity. My self-consciousness is not in myself, but in another; but this Other in whom alone I find satisfaction and am at