Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/26

 by means of predicates is that these predicates are only particular characterisations, and that there are many such particular characterisations, and that it is the subject as essentially undifferentiated to which they are attached; and this explains, too, how there comes to be such an infinite number of predicates. Since there are particular determinations, and since these particularisations are viewed in accordance with their determinateness, and are made the subject of thought, they come to be in opposition or contradiction with each other, and these contradictions accordingly are not harmonised.

This is further seen when these predicates are taken as expressing the relation of God to the world, and when the world is thought of as something different from God. Being particularisations, they cannot adequately express His nature, and this explains that other way of considering them as expressing certain relations between God and the world, such as the omnipresence, the infinite wisdom of God in the world.

They do not contain the true relation of God to Himself, but to an Other, the world namely, and thus they are limited, and in this way get to be contradictory. We have the feeling that God is not represented in this way as living when so many particular features are counted up one after the other. Nor is the contradiction which they involve truly harmonised by taking away their determinateness when the Understanding demands that they should be taken merely sensu eminentiori. The true harmony or solution of the contradiction is contained in the Idea, which is the self-determination of God to the act of distinguishing Himself from Himself, but is at the same time the eternal abolition of the distinction.

If the element of difference were left remaining, there would be contradiction, and if this difference were permanent, then finitude would arise. Both are independent in reference to each other, and they are in relation to each other as well. It is not the nature of the Idea to allow