Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/53

 with a broader meaning, is raised when it is said that the world or matter, inasmuch as it is regarded as having existed from all eternity, is uncreated and exists immediately for itself. The separation made by the Understanding between form and matter lies at the basis of this statement; while the real truth is that matter and the world, regarded according to their fundamental characteristics, are this Other, the negative, which is itself simply a moment or element of posited Being. This is the opposite of something independent, and the meaning of its existence is simply that it annuls itself and is a moment in the Process. The natural world is relative, it is Appearance, i.e., it is this not only for us, but implicitly, and it belongs to its quality or character to pass over and return into the ultimate Idea. It is in the determination of the independence of Other-Being that all the various metaphysical determinations given to the ὕλη amongst the ancients, and also amongst those Christians who indulged in philosophical speculations, the Gnostics particularly, have their root.

It is owing to the otherness or Other-Being of the world that this latter is simply something created and has not a complete and independent Being, Being in-and-for-itself, and when a distinction is drawn between the beginning as creation and the preservation of what actually exists, this is done in accordance with the ordinary conception which implies that such a material world is actually present and is possessed of real Being. It has always been correctly held that since the world does not possess Being, an independence belonging to it in virtue of its own nature, preservation is a kind of creation. But if we can say that creation is also preservation, we would express ourselves thus merely in virtue of the fact that the moment of Other-Being is itself a moment of the Idea, or else it would be presupposed, as was done previously, that something possessed of Being preceded the act of creation.