thing posited, and not immediate—it is degraded from being immediate to being posited, so that absolute Spirit is in reality the True, the positing of the Idea, as well as the positing of Nature and of finite Spirit; in other words, absolute Spirit self-conscious of itself is the First and the alone True, in which the finite world which is thus something posited exists as a moment.
This procedure, therefore, which, to begin with, showed itself as a procedure prior to religion, and in which the beginning was made from the immediate, without reference to God, so that God only comes into being by means of it, is now seen to be rather a moment within religion itself, but in a shape and form different from that in which it first appeared, in which its relation to God is, as it were, of a merely natural and naive kind. Here, on the other hand, God is absolutely the First, and that procedure is the active play and movement of the Idea of absolute Spirit within itself. Spirit is for itself or self-conscious, that is to say, makes itself an object, has independent existence over against the Notion, as that which we call “the world,” “Nature.” This diremption, or separation, is the first moment. The other consists in the movement of this object back to this its source, to which it continues to belong, and to which it must return. This movement constitutes the Divine life. Spirit as absolute is, in the first place, manifestation or appearance to self, the self-existent Being-for-self. Manifestation, as such, is Nature; and Spirit is not only that which appears, not only that which is for beholders, but is Being-for-itself, what exists on its own account, manifestation to itself, and the fact that it is such makes it consciousness of itself as Spirit. Thus the moment which was at first considered as necessity is seen to be within Spirit itself, and we have that necessity so far as its essence is concerned within religion too; not, however, as immediate determinate Being, but as manifestation of the Idea; not as Being, but as manifestation of the Divine.
The concrete filling-up of the notion or conception of
