Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/237

 It is substance as an idea merely, which does not decide for itself, and which consequently is not the activity which as activity is found only in the subjective elevation as such. It would not in this case be known and recognised as true that God is the Spirit who Himself arouses in men that desire to rise to Him, that religious feeling in which the elevation begins.

If from this one-sidedness there results a broader idea and a further development of what does not, to begin with, get beyond something which has the character of a reflex semblance, and if we thus reach its emancipation, in which it, as being independent and active, would in its turn be defined as not-semblance, then we would attribute to this independent existence merely a relative, and consequently a half connection with its other side, which contained in it itself a non-communicating and incommunicable kernel which had nothing to do with the Other. We would be dealing merely with the superficial form, in which the two sides were apparently related to each other, and which would not imply a relation springing from their essence and established by their essence. Both sides consequently would be wanting in the true, total return of Spirit into itself, and Spirit would thus not search into the deep things of the Godhead. But this return into itself and this searching into the Other are essentially coincident; for mere immediacy, substantial Being, does not imply anything deep. It is the real return into self which alone makes the depths of God, and it is just the act of searching into the Essence which is return into self.

We may stop here with this preliminary reference to the more concrete sense of the difference indicated, and which we discovered by means of reflection. What had to be called attention to was that the difference is not a superfluous multiplicity; further, that the division springing from it, and which was, to begin with, of a formal and external character, contains two characteristics—Nature, natural things, and the progress of consciousness to God