Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/235

 and out of itself. If, accordingly, only the one side were to determine itself so as to be the other, this determination would, on the one hand, be merely a passing over, in which the first would lose itself, or, on the other hand, a manifestation of itself, outside of itself, in which each would certainly preserve its independent existence, but would not return into itself, would not be that unity for itself. If we give to the Notion the concrete signification of God, and to Being the concrete signification of Nature, and conceived of the self-determination of God in the form of Nature, as found only in the first of the connections indicated, this would be the process whereby God becomes Nature. But if, according to the second of the connections, Nature is to be taken merely as a manifestation of God, then she, as something in course of transition, would represent the unity inherent in this only for a third thing, only for us, and this would not be unity which is actually present in-and-for-itself, the true unity, determined beforehand. When we put this thought in more concrete forms, and conceive of God as the Idea existing for itself from which we start, and think of Being as also the totality of Being, as Nature, then the advance from the Idea to Nature takes (1) the form simply of a passing over into Nature, in which the Idea is lost and disappears. (2) In order to bring out more clearly the meaning of this transition, we may say that this would be merely an act of remembrance on our part that the simple result had issued from an Other which had, however, disappeared. So far, again, as the outward form is concerned, it would be simply we who had brought the semblance or appearance into relation with its Essence and referred it back to this. Or, looking at the question from a broader standpoint, we may say that God had merely created Nature, not a finite spirit which returns from Nature back to Him; that He had an unfruitful love of the world as of something which was the mere semblance or show of Himself, and which as such remained an Other in