Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/331

 that is, every existing thing in its finitude and particularity, is held to be possessed of Being as God or as a god, and that the finite is deified as having Being. It could only be a narrow and ordinary or rather a scholastic kind of mind which would expect this to be the case, and which, being perfectly unconcerned about what actually is, sticks to one category, and to the category, in fact, of finite particularisation, and accordingly conceives of the manifoldness which it finds mentioned, as a permanent, existing, substantial particularisation. There can be no mistake but that the essential and Christian definition of freedom or individuality, which as free is infinite in itself and is personality, has misled the Understanding into conceiving of the particularisation of finitude under the category of an existing unchangeable atom, and into overlooking the moment of the negative which is involved in force and in the general system to which it belongs. It imagines Pantheism as saying that all, that is, all things in their existing isolation, are God, since it takes the πᾶν in this definite category as referring to all and every individual thing. Such an absurd idea has never come into anybody’s head outside of the ranks of these opponents of Pantheism. This latter represents a view which is, on the contrary, quite the opposite of that which they associate with it. The finite, the contingent is not something which subsists for itself. In the affirmative sense it is only a manifestation, a revelation of the One, only an appearance of it which is itself merely contingency. The fact is that it is the negative aspect, the disappearance in the one force, the ideality of what has Being as a momentary standpoint in the force, which is the predominant aspect. In opposition to this the Understanding holds that these things exist for themselves and have their essence in themselves, and are thus in and in accordance with this finite essentiality, supposed to be divine or even to be God. They cannot free themselves from the absoluteness of their finitude,