Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/364

 Spirit. Put in the form of a syllogism, it runs thus: Because finite minds exist or are,—and it is Being which here constitutes the starting-point,—therefore the absolute Mind or Spirit exists or is.

But this “because,” this merely affirmative relation, is defective in this respect, that the finite minds would require to be thought of as the basis, and God would be a consequence of the existence of finite minds. The true form is: There are finite minds, but the finite has no truth, the truth of the finite spirit is the absolute Spirit.

The finitude of finite minds is no true Being; it is by its very nature dialectic, which implies that it abrogates itself, negates itself, and the negation of this finitude is affirmation as infinitude, as something universal in-and-for-itself. This is the highest form of the transition; for the transition is here Spirit itself.

There are in this connection two characteristics, Being and God. In so far as we start from Being, this latter, looked at as it first shows itself, is directly finite. Since these characteristics exist, we could equally as well begin from God and go on to Being, though, when we say we could, we must remember that we cannot speak of what we can do in connection with the conception of God, because He is absolute necessity.

This starting-point when it thus appears in finite form does not yet involve Being; for a God who is not, is something finite, and is not truly God. The finitude of this relation consists in the fact that it is subjective, that it is this general conception in fact. God has existence, but He has only this purely finite existence in our idea of Him.

This is one-sided; we have introduced into this content, namely, God, the taint of that one-sidedness, that finitude, which is termed the idea of God. The main point is that the idea should get rid of this defect whereby it is something merely represented in the mind, something