Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/300

 expression to this. Truth is a force of such a character that it is present even in what is false, and it only requires correct observation and attention in order to discover the True in the False itself, or rather actually to see it there. The True is here mediation with self by the negation of the Other and of the mediation through the Other. The negation, both of mediation through an Other, as well as of the abstract immediacy which is devoid of mediation, is present in the “therefore” above referred to.

Further, if the one proposition is: The contingent is, and the other: The necessary in-and-for-itself is, this essentially suggests that the Being of the contingent has an absolutely different value from necessary Being in-and-for-itself. Still Being is what is common to both, and it is the one characteristic in both propositions. In accordance with this the transition does not take the form of a passing from one form of Being to another, but from one characteristic of thought to another. Being purifies itself from the predicate of contingency, which is inadequate to express its nature. Being is simple self-identity or equality with self. Contingency, on the other hand, is Being which is absolutely unlike itself, which contradicts itself, and it is only in the Absolutely-necessary that it is once more restored to this condition of self-identity. It is accordingly here that the course thus followed by the act of elevation to God, or this aspect of the act of proof, differs more definitely from the others referred to, in this, namely, that in the former of the two methods of procedure the characteristic which has to be proved, or is supposed to result from the proof, is not Being. Being is rather what the two aspects have permanently in common and which is continued from the one into the other. In the other method of procedure, on the contrary, the transition has to be made from the notion or conception of God to His Being. This transition seems more difficult than that from a determinateness of content in general, what