Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/52

 and depth which belong to a world; it is heaven and earth, with all their infinite organisation, internal and external. When, accordingly, we say that the Other is a vanishing moment; that it is merely the gleam of the lightning-flash, which, in appearing, directly disappears; that it is the sound of a word, which, in being spoken and heard, disappears so far as its outward existence is concerned—we are very apt, when we think of things of this transitory sort, to have always before our minds the idea of the momentary in time, with its before and after, and yet it is in neither of the two. What we have really got to do is to get rid of that time-determination, whether it be of duration or of the present, and merely to keep to the simple thought of the Other, the simple thought, for the Other is an abstraction. That this abstraction has actually taken an extended form in the world of space and time is explained by the fact that it is the simple moment of the Idea itself, and accordingly receives the Idea wholly into itself; but because it is the moment of otherness or Other-Being it takes the form of immediate, material extension.

Questions as to whether the world or matter is eternal, and has existed from all eternity, or has begun in time, belong to the empty metaphysics of the Understanding. In the phrase “from all eternity,” eternity itself is represented in a figurative way as infinite time, in accordance with a false kind of infinitude, the infinitude and the determination being those of Reflection merely. It is the world which is really the region of contradiction; in it the Idea appears in a specialised form which is inadequate to express it. As soon as the world enters into the region of ordinary thought or figurative idea, the element of time comes in, and next, by means of reflection, the infinitude or eternity referred to. We must, however, understand that this characteristic in no way applies to the Notion itself.

Another question, or what is partly the same question