Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/231

 characteristics of God resulting from the several proofs, to the one notion or conception which is to be conceived of as being one in itself, is the ordinary one, according to which they are to be carried back to a higher unity, as it is called, i.e., a more abstract unity, and, since the unity of God is the highest of all, to what is consequently the most abstract form of unity. The most abstract unity, however, is unity itself, and from this it would result that the Idea of God means simply that God is unity—and to express this in terms implying a subject, or at least something which has Being—that He is the One in fact, a description, however, which implies that He is One only as against many, so that the One in Himself might still also be a predicate of the many, and therefore be unity in Himself, the One Substance rather, or, if you like, Being. But such an abstract form of determination would simply bring us back to this, that what would result from the proof of the existence of God would be simply the Being of God in an abstract sense, or, what comes to the same thing, that God Himself would simply be the abstract One (neuter) or Being, the empty Essence of the Understanding, over against which would be placed the concrete idea of God, which cannot find satisfaction in any such abstract characterisation. But not only is the ordinary idea not satisfied with this abstraction, the Notion looked at in its general aspect is by its very nature concrete itself, and what appears outwardly as difference and multiplicity of characteristics is simply the development of its moments, which all the while remains within itself. It is therefore the inner necessity of reason which shows itself active in thinking Spirit, and produces in it this multiplicity of characteristics; only, since this thought has not yet got a grasp of the nature of the Notion itself, nor consequently of the nature of its relation and the necessity of the connection, what are virtually stages in development appear to be simply an accidental multiplicity, the various elements of which follow on one another and are