Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/214

relation of the subjective Ego to the Universal. The finite is but an essential moment of the infinite, the infinite is absolute negativity, that is, affirmation, which however is mediation within itself. The simple unity, identity, and abstract affirmation of the infinite is, in itself, no truth, but rather is it essential that it should differentiate or break itself up within itself. In this process it is in the first place affirmation, and then secondly, distinction; thirdly, the affirmation appears as negation of the negation, and thus for the first time as the True. Nor does the standpoint of the finite represent any more that which is true. On the contrary it must annul itself, and it is only in this act of negation that we have what is true. The finite is therefore an essential moment of the infinite in the nature of God, and thus it may be said it is God Himself who renders Himself finite, who produces determinations within Himself. Now this might at first appear to us to be something unlike a Divine process, but we already have it in the ordinary ideas about God; for we are accustomed to believe in Him as the Creator of the world. God creates a world, God determines; outside of Him there is nothing to determine. He determines Himself when He thinks Himself, places an Other over against Himself, when He and a world are two. God creates the world out of nothing; that is to say, besides the world nothing external exists, for it is itself externality. God alone is; God, however, only through mediation of Himself with Himself. He wills the finite; He Himself posits it as an Other, and thus Himself becomes an Other than Himself—a finite—for He has an Other opposed to Himself. This “otherness,” however, is the contradiction of Himself with Himself. He is thus the finite, in relation to that which is finite. But the truth is that this finiteness is only an appearance, a phenomenal shape in which He has or possesses Himself. Creation is activity. In this is involved differentiation,