Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/50

 moments which are contained in Him. The other side, again, is represented by subjective consciousness, the finite spirit, and this as pure thought is regarded as implicitly the Process which found its starting-point in the Immediate, and raised itself to the condition of truth. This is the second form.

We thus enter the sphere of determination, enter space and the world of finite Spirit. This may be more definitely expressed as a positing or bringing into view of the determinations or specific qualities, as a difference which is momentarily maintained; it is an act of going out on the part of God into finitude, an act of manifestation in finitude, for finitude taken in its proper meaning, implies simply the separation of what is implicitly identical, but which maintains itself in the act of separation. Regarded from the other side, that of subjective Spirit, this is posited as pure thought, though it is implicitly a result, and this has to be posited as it is potentially in its character as the movement of thought, or, to put it otherwise, pure thought has to go into itself, and it is in this way that it first posits itself as finite.

Regarding the matter from this standpoint, this Other is not represented by the Son, but by the external world, the finite world, which is outside of truth, the world of finitude, in which the Other has the form of Being, and is yet in its nature merely the ἕτερον, the definite, the differentiated, the limited, the negative.

The relation of these two spheres to the first may thus be defined by saying that it is the same Idea potentially which is present, though with this different specific form. The absolute act involved in that first judgment or act of differentiation is implicitly the same as the second here referred to; it is only in ordinary thought that the two are regarded as separate, as two absolutely distinct spheres and acts.

And, as a matter of fact, they have to be distinguished and kept separate; and when it is said that they are implicitly