Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/47

 certainty for me, this is immediate knowledge, this is certainty. The next form of mediation consists in proving that what is is likewise necessary, that it is true, that it is something certain. This accordingly is the transition to the Universal.

By starting from the form of truth, we have reached the definite thought that this form possesses certainty, that it exists for me.

The other mode of viewing the advance of the Idea to manifestation is to regard it from the side of the Idea itself.

1. Eternal Being, in-and-for-itself, is something which unfolds itself, determines itself, differentiates itself, posits itself as its own difference, but the difference, again, is at the same time eternally done away with and absorbed; what has essential Being, Being in-and-for-itself, eternally returns to itself in this, and only in so far as it does this is it Spirit.

What is differentiated is determined in such a way that the difference directly disappears, and so, that this is seen to be a relation of God merely to Himself, of the Idea merely to itself. This act of differentiation is merely a movement, a playing of love with itself, in which it does not get to be otherness or Other-Being in any serious sense, nor actually reach a condition of separation and division.

The Other is defined as the Son, as love regarded from the side of feeling, or, defined from a higher point of view, as Spirit which is not outside of itself, which is with itself, which is free. In this determination, the determination of difference is not yet complete so far as the Idea is concerned. What we have here is merely abstract difference in general, we have not yet got to difference in the form which peculiarly belongs to it; difference here is only one characteristic or determination amongst others.

In this respect we can say that we have not yet got the length of difference. The things differentiated are