Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/318

 it hears of a negative too easily makes Nothing out of it, pure Nothing, Nothing as such, and gives up all thought of its being in any way connected with existence in so far as existence is defined as contingent, phenomenal, and so on. Reflective analysis points to the two moments which exist in a content of this kind—namely, an affirmative, definite Being, existence as one particular form of Being; but a moment also which involves the quality of finality, mortality, limits, and so on, in the form of negation. Thought, if it is to form a conception of the contingent, cannot allow these moments to be separated into a Nothing for itself and a Being for itself. For they do not exist in this form in the contingent; on the contrary, it comprises both in itself. They are therefore not to be taken as existing each by itself in connection with one another, nor is the contingent to be taken just as it is, as representing the connection between them. This then is the speculative determination. It remains true to the content of ordinary thought or conception, while, on the contrary, this content escapes abstract thought which asserts the independence of the two moments. It has resolved into its parts the contingent, which is the object of the Understanding.

The contingent accordingly, as thus defined, represents what is a contradiction in itself. What thus resolves itself becomes in consequence just exactly what it became in the hands of the Understanding. But resolution is of two sorts. The resolution effected by the Understanding results simply in the disappearance of the object, of the concrete union; while in the other kind of resolution the object is preserved. Still this preservation does not help it much, or not at all, for in being thus preserved it is defined as a contradiction, and contradiction dissolves itself; what contradicts itself is Nothing. However correct this may be, it is at the same time incorrect. Contradiction and Nothing are at all events distinct from one another. Contradiction is concrete, it