Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/367

 The Notion, and still more the absolute Notion, the Notion in-and-for-itself, the Notion of God, is to be taken for itself, and this Notion contains Being as a determinate characteristic. Being is a form of the determinateness of the Notion. This may easily be shown to be the case in two ways.

First of all, the Notion is essentially the Universal which determines itself, which particularises itself; it is what has the active power of differentiation, of particularising and determining itself, of positing a finitude, and of negating this its own finitude, and of being through the negation of this finitude identical with itself.

This is the Notion in general. This is just what the Notion of God, the absolute Notion, God, really is. God as Spirit or as love means that God particularises Himself, begets the Son, creates the world, an Other of Himself, and possesses Himself, is identical with Himself, in this Other.

In the Notion in general, and still more in the Idea, what, in fact, we see is, that through the negation of the particularisation, the positing of which is at the same time the work of the activity which He Himself is, He is identical with Himself, relates Himself to Himself.

The primary question is, What is Being? what is this attribute, this determinateness, namely, reality? Being is nothing but the unutterable, the inconceivable; it is not that concrete something which the Notion is, but merely the abstraction of reference to self. We may say, it is immediacy, Being is the Immediate in general, and conversely the Immediate is Being, it is in relation to itself, that is, the mediation is negated.

This determination, namely, reference to self, or immediacy, accordingly directly exists for itself in the Notion in general, and it is involved in the absolute Notion, in the Notion of God, that He is reference to self. This abstract reference to self is directly found in the Notion itself.