Thus, sense-knowledge is based on the idea that the differences have an independent existence and remain external to one another.
Thus, for the senses, what is in the Idea is a mystery, for in the region of the Idea, the way in which things are looked at, the relations ascribed to things, and the categories employed, are entirely different from what we have in the region of sense. The Idea is just this act of distinguishing or differentiation which at the same time gives no difference and does not hold to this difference as permanent. God beholds Himself in what is differentiated; and when in His Other He is united merely with Himself, He is there with no other but Himself, He is in close union only with Himself, He beholds Himself in His Other.
In connection with the senses we have something quite the reverse of this. In sense-knowledge one thing is here and another there, each passes for something independent, it does not pass for being something which is what it is because it finds itself in an Other. In the region of sense-knowledge two things cannot be in one and the same place; they are mutually exclusive.
In the Idea the differences are posited, not as exclusive, but as existing only in this mutual inclusion of the one by the other. This is the true supersensuous, not the ordinary supersensuous, which is regarded as something above; for this latter equally belongs to the region of the sensuous, in which things are outside of one another and indifferent to one another. In so far as God is characterised as Spirit, externality is done away with and absorbed, and therefore this is a mystery for sense.
This Idea is equally something beyond the grasp of the Understanding and is for it a secret, for it is the very nature of the Understanding to hold fast by and keep unchangeably to the idea that the categories of thought are absolutely exclusive and different, and that they
