Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/42

 measure the various heresies, particularly the Gnostic heresy. Speaking generally, we see in these attempts to grasp the Idea of the Three-in-One, the reality which characterises Western thought refined away into an intellectual world through the influence of Eastern idealism. These are, to be sure, only first attempts resulting in what were merely paltry and fantastic conceptions. Still we can see in them at least the struggle of Spirit to reach truth, and this deserves recognition.

An almost countless number of forms of stating the truth may be observed here; the First is, the Father, the Ὄν, terms which express something which is the abyss or depths of Being, i.e., something, in fact, which is as yet empty, which cannot be grasped by thought, but is incomprehensible and beyond the power of any conception to express.

For what is empty, indeterminate, is undoubtedly the Incomprehensible, the negative of the Notion, and it is the nature of its notion to be this negative since it is merely one-sided abstraction, and constitutes what is merely a moment of the Notion. The One for itself, is not yet the Notion, the True.

If the First is defined as the merely Universal, and if the definitions or determinations are simply referred to the Universal, to the ὄν, then we certainly get the incomprehensible, for it is without content; anything comprehensible is concrete, and can be comprehended only in so far as it is determined as a moment. And it is in this that the defect lies, namely, that the First is not conceived of as being by its very nature totality.

Another idea of the same kind is expressed when it is said that the First is the βυθός, the Abyss, the depths, ἄιών, the Eternal, whose dwelling is in the inexpressible heights, who is raised above all contact with finite things, out of whom nothing is evolved, the First Principle, the Father of all existence, the Propator, who is a Father only mediately, the προαρχη, He who was before the