Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/35

 to exist. They are, however, misused when, as here, they are used in connection with the expression, three are one. It is accordingly easy to point out that there are contradictions in such ideas, differences which get the length of being opposites, and the sterile Understanding prides itself on amassing these. In all that is concrete, in all that has life, this contradiction is involved, as has been already shown. It is only the dead Understanding that is self-identical. In the Idea, on the other hand, we see the contradiction cancelled as well, and it is just this cancelling or harmonising which is spiritual unity.

To enumerate the moments of the Idea as three units appears to be something quite ingenuous and natural, and which does not require to be explained. Only, in accordance with the nature of number, which is here introduced into the matter, each characteristic gets a fixed form as one, and we are required to conceive of three units as only one unit, a demand which it is extremely hard to entertain, and which is, as is sometimes said, an utterly irrational demand.

It is the Understanding alone that is always haunted by this idea of the absolute independence of the unit or One, this idea of absolute separation and rupture. If, on the contrary, we regard the matter from the point of view of logic, we see that the One has an inner dialectic movement, and is not truly independent. It is only necessary to think of matter which is the true One or unity that offers resistance, but which is subject to the law of gravitation, i.e., it makes an effort not to be one, and rather to do away with its state of independence, and thus confesses that this is a nullity. In fact, just because it is only matter, and continues to be the most external externality, it remains in the condition merely of something which ought to be. Matter as such is the poorest, most external, most unspiritual mode of existence; but it is gravitation, or the abolition of the oneness, which constitutes the fundamental characteristic of matter.