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126 covering all the country between them. I know a man, not very unlike myself, who exercises jurisdiction over a piece of land between the Wabash and the Mississippi; and yet so far is this from being all there is between those rivers that it is just one hundred and fifty-two feet long by fifty feet wide, and no part of it much within a hundred miles of either. He has a neighbor between him and the Mississippi—that is, just across the street, in that direction—whom I am sure he could neither persuade nor force to give up his habitation; but which nevertheless he could certainly annex, if it were to be done by merely standing on his own side of the street and claiming it, or even sitting down and writing a deed for it.

But next the President tells us the Congress of the United States understood the State of Texas they admitted into the Union to extend beyond the Nueces. Well, I suppose they did. I certainly so understood it. But how far beyond? That Congress did not understand it to extend clear to the Rio Grande is quite certain, by the fact of their joint resolutions for admission expressly leaving all questions of boundary to future adjustment. And it may be added that Texas herself is proved to have had the same understanding of it that our Congress had, by the fact of the exact conformity of her new constitution to those resolutions.

I am now through the whole of the President's evidence; and it is a singular fact that if any one should declare the President sent the army into the midst of a settlement of Mexican people who had never submitted, by consent or by force, to the authority of Texas or of the United States,


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Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)/Gregory, St.

GREGORY, ST., surnamed Illuminator, the founder of the Armenian Church; born in Valarshabad, Armenia, about 257. He was of the royal Parthian race of the Arsacidae, and son of Anak,

murderer of Chosrov I., King of Armenia. For this crime the whole family was slain save himself. He owed his escape to a Christian nurse, who secretly conveyed him, when he was 2 years old, to Cæsarea, in Cappadocia, her native town. He there married a Christian, who bore him two sons, and soon afterward became a nun. Gregory proceeded to Rome, and entered the service of Terdat, Chosrov's son. After Terdat (Tiridates III.) had, with the help of the Romans, recovered his father's kingdom (286), Gregory, for his refusal to crown with garlands the statue of Anahit, tutelary goddess of Armenia, was thrown by Terdat into a deep pit, where a pious widow nourished him for 14 years. About the end of that time Terdat was visited with the punishment of Nebuchadnezzar. Healed and baptized by Gregory, he became a zealous Christian, and established Christianity by force throughout his dominions. Gregory was consecrated bishop and head of the Armenian Church by Leontius, Archbishop of Cæsarea. Having resigned the patriarchate in favor of his second son Aristaces, Gregory in 331 retired to a cave at the foot of Mount Sebuh in Upper Armenia, where he died in 332.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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1848] and that there and thereby the first blood of the war was shed, there is not one word in all the President has said which would either admit or deny the declaration. This strange omission it does seem to me could not have occurred but by design. My way of living leads me to be about the courts of justice; and there I have sometimes seen a good lawyer, struggling for his client's neck in a desperate case, employing every artifice to work round, befog, and cover up with many words some point arising in the case which he dared not admit and yet could not deny. Party bias may help to make it appear so, but with all the allowance I can make for such bias, it still does appear to me that just such, and from just such necessity, is the President's struggle in this case.

Some time after my colleague [Mr. Richardson] introduced the resolutions I have mentioned, I introduced a preamble, resolution, and interrogations, intended to draw the President out, if possible, on this hitherto untrodden ground. To show their relevancy, I propose to state my understanding of the true rule for ascertaining the boundary between Texas and Mexico. It is that wherever Texas was exercising jurisdiction was hers; and wherever Mexico was exercising jurisdiction was hers; and that whatever separated the actual exercise of jurisdiction of the one from that of the other was the true boundary between them. If, as is probably true, Texas was exercising jurisdiction along the western bank of the Nueces, and Mexico was exercising it along the eastern bank of the Rio Grande, then neither river was the boundary; but the uninhabited country between the two was. The


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128 of our territory in that region depended not on any treaty-fixed boundary (for no treaty had attempted it), but on revolution. Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right—a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with or near about them, who may oppose this movement. Such minority was precisely the case of the Tories of our own revolution. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones.

As to the country now in question, we bought it of France in 1803, and sold it to Spain in 1819, according to the President's statements. After this, all Mexico, including Texas, revolutionized against Spain; and still later Texas revolutionized against Mexico. In my view, just so far as she carried her revolution by obtaining the actual, willing or unwilling, submission of the people, so far the country was hers, and no farther. Now, sir, for the purpose of obtaining the very best evidence as to whether Texas had actually carried her revolution to the place where the hostilities of the present war commenced, let the President answer the interrogatories I proposed, as before mentioned, or some other similar ones. Let him


text: Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln/Volume 3/Arraignment of President Polk for War Against Mexico


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Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)/Hyde, Douglas

HYDE, DOUGLAS, an Irish author. He was born in Roscommon and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. Has been leading promoter of the revival of the Irish language and Irish customs and was president of the Gaelic League from its foundation till 1915. Has written many books both in Irish and English. President of the Irish Texts Society, Examiner in Irish to the Royal University. Received honorary freedom of Dublin, Cork, and Kilkenny in 1906 on returning from America with $55,000 for Gaelic League. His works include: “Love Songs of Connacht” (in Irish with English translation); “Literary History of Ireland”; “Mediaeval Tales from the Irish.”


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User talk:99.3.15.59

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1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Fryatt, Charles

FRYATT, CHARLES (1872-1916), British sea-captain, was born at Parkeston, near Harwich, Essex, Dec. 2 1872. He entered the service of the Great Eastern Railway Co., and in 1904 became chief officer in their service of vessels plying between Harwich and Rotterdam, in 1913 becoming captain. He continued to navigate his ship, the “Brussels,” to Rotterdam and back for the first two years of the World War. At the end of July 1916 it was announced that the “Brussels” had been captured and the captain himself arrested and tried by court-martial on a charge of having attempted on March 28 1916 to ram the German submarine U33 near the Maas lightship. The German authorities stated that Captain Fryatt had confessed during his examination that he had acted under orders from the Admiralty, but the trial was suspiciously hurried and secret, an application for postponement being refused, and no intervention on the part of neutrals was allowed. The captain was condemned to death and shot at Bruges July 28 1916. Half an hour after the execution had been carried out a telegram arrived from the army headquarters at Berlin ordering the sentence to be postponed. The news of the execution aroused great indignation in England, and on two occasions it was stated by Mr. Asquith in the House of Commons that due reparation would be exacted for this and similar murders. Ample provision was made for Captain Fryatt's family, his widow being awarded a pension of £100 a year over and above the amount to which she was already entitled under the Government compensation scheme, while the Great Eastern Railway Co. also gave Mrs. Fryatt an annuity of £250 a year for life. The captain's body was on July 7 1919 brought from Belgium to England. A memorial service was held at St. Paul's on July 8, and the body was buried at Dovercourt church, near Harwich.


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1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Garfield, Harry Augustus

GARFIELD, HARRY AUGUSTUS (1863-), American educator, son of James A. Garfield, 20th president of the U.S., was born at Hiram, O., Oct. 11 1863. After graduating from Williams College in 1885, he taught for a year in St. Paul's school, Concord, N.H., and from 1888 to 1903 practised law in

Cleveland. He was professor of contracts in the Law school of Western Reserve University from 1891 to 1897; helped to organize, in 1896, the municipal association of Cleveland; and served as president of the Cleveland chamber of commerce, 1908-9. He was professor of politics at Princeton University from 1903 to 1908 and in the latter year became president of Williams College. In Aug. 1917 he was appointed Federal fuel administrator by President Wilson. His duty was to conserve the coal supply and keep the price within reasonable bounds. Local committees were appointed throughout the country to study local conditions and their reports formed the basis for the prices fixed in different localities. The ensuing winter was unusually severe, and serious shortage of coal threatened. This led to his issuing his “idle Mondays” order in Jan. 1918, closing non-essential industries for five consecutive days beginning Jan. 18 and on every Monday thereafter up to March 25. This roused a storm of protest from many manufacturers; and the U.S. Senate voted a resolution, requesting postponement, but this reached him after the order had been signed. On Feb. 14, however, the order was suspended and priority for certain shipments substituted. He disapproved of the method of settling the coal strike in Dec. 1919 and resigned his office, resuming that of president of Williams College.


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THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

PART III

THE ABSOLUTE RELIGION—(Continued)

C.

THE DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT.

I. The absolute, eternal Idea is, in its essential existence, in and for itself, God in His eternity before the creation of the world, and outside of the world.

II. The Creation of the World.—What is thus created, this otherness or other-Being, divides up within itself into two sides, physical Nature and finite Spirit. What is thus created is therefore an Other, and is placed at first outside of God. It belongs to God’s essential nature, however, to reconcile to Himself this something which is foreign to Him, this special or particular element which comes into existence as something separated from Him, just as it is the nature of the Idea which has separated itself from itself and fallen away from itself, to bring itself back from this lapse to its truth or true state.

III. It is the way or process of reconciliation whereby Spirit unites and brings into harmony with itself what it distinguished from itself in the state of diremption and differentiation, and thus Spirit is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit is present in its Church.

Thus the distinctions we make are not made in an


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 external fashion; but, on the contrary, the action, the developed life-force of the Absolute Spirit, is itself an eternal life; it is a development and a carrying back of this development into itself.

Put more definitely, what is involved in this idea is that the universal Spirit, the Whole which this Spirit is, posits itself together with its three characteristics or determinations, develops itself, realises itself, and that only at the end we have in a completed form what constitutes at the same time its presupposition. It exists at first as a Whole, it pre-posits or presupposes itself, and exists likewise only at the end. Spirit has thus to be considered in the three forms or elements in which it posits itself.

The three forms indicated are: eternal Being in and with itself, the form of Universality; the form of manifestation or appearance, that of Particularisation, Being for another; the form of the return from appearance into itself, absolute Singleness or individuality.

The divine Idea unfolds itself in these three forms. Spirit is divine history, the process of self-differentiation, of separation or diremption, and of the resumption of this; it is divine history, and this history is to be considered in each of these three forms.

Considered in relation to the subjective consciousness, they may further be defined as follows. The first form is the element of thought. In pure thought God is as He is in-and-for-Himself, is revealed, but He has not yet reached the stage of manifestation or appearance, He is God in His eternal essence, God abiding with Himself and yet revealed. According to the second form He exists in the element of the popular or figurative idea, in the element of particularisation. Consciousness here takes up an attitude of reserve in reference to the “Other,” and this represents the stage of appearance or manifestation. The third element is that of subjectivity as such. This subjectivity is partly immediate, and takes


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 the form of feeling, idea, sentiment; but it is also partly subjectivity which represents the Notion, thinking reason, the thought of free Spirit, which is free only when it returns into itself.

As regards place or space, the three forms, since they appear as development and history in different places, so to speak, are to be explained as follows. The divine history in its first form takes place outside of the world, outside of finitude where there is no space, representing God as He is in His essential being or in-and-for-Himself. The second form is represented by the divine history in a real shape in the world, God in definite completed existence. The third stage is represented by the inner place, the Spiritual Community, existing at first in the world, but at the same time raising itself up to heaven, and which as a Church already has Him in itself here on earth, full of grace, active and present in the world.

It is also possible to characterise the three elements, and to distinguish them in accordance with the note of Time. In the first element God is beyond time, as the eternal Idea, existing in the element of eternity in so far as eternity is contrasted with time. Thus time in this complete and independent form, time in-and-for-self, unfolds itself and breaks up into past, present, and future. Thus the divine history in its second stage as appearance is regarded as the past, it is, it has Being, but it is Being which is degraded to a mere semblance. In taking on the form of appearance it is immediate existence, which is at the same time negated, and this is the past. The divine history is thus regarded as something past, as representing the Historical properly so called. The third element is the present, yet it is only the limited present, not the eternal present, but rather the present which distinguishes itself from the past and future, and represents the element of feeling, of the immediate subjectivity of spiritual Being which is now. The present must, however, also represent the third element; the Church raises itself to Heaven too,


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 and thus this Present is one which raises itself as well and is essentially reconciled, and is brought by means of the negation of its immediacy to a perfected form as universality, a perfection or completion which, however, does not yet exist, and which is therefore to be conceived of as future. It is a Now of the present whose perfect stage is before it, but this perfect stage is distinguished from the particular Now which is still immediacy, and it is thought of as future.

We have, speaking generally, to consider the Idea as divine self-revelation, and this revelation is to be taken in the sense indicated by the three categories just mentioned.

According to the first of these, God exists in a pure form for the finite spirit only as thought. This is the theoretical consciousness in which the thinking subject exists in a condition of absolute composure, and is not yet posited in this relation, not yet posited in the form of a process, but exists in the absolutely unmoved calm of the thinking spirit. Here God is for it thought of, exists for thought, and Spirit thus rests in the simple conclusion that He brings Himself into harmony with Himself by means of His difference—which, however, here exists only in the form of pure ideality, and has not yet reached the form of externality—and is in immediate unity with Himself. This is the first of these relations, and it exists solely for the thinking subject which is occupied with the pure content only. This is the Kingdom of the Father.

The second characteristic is the Kingdom of the Son, in which God exists, in a general way, for idea or figurative thought in the element of mental pictures or representation by ideas. This is the moment of separation or particularisation in general. Looked at from this second standpoint, what in the first stage represented God’s Other or object, without, however, being defined as such, now receives the character or determination of an


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 Other. Considered from the first standpoint, God as the Son is not distinguished from the Father, but what is stated of Him is expressed merely in terms of feeling. In connection with the second element, however, the Son is characterised as an Other or object, and thus we pass out of the pure ideality of Thought into the region of ordinary thought or idea. If, according to the first characterisation, God begets only one Son, here He produces Nature. Here the Other is Nature, and the element of difference thus receives its justification. What is thus differentiated is Nature, the world in general, and Spirit which is related to it, the natural Spirit. Here the element which we have already designated Subject comes in, and itself constitutes the content. Man is here involved in the content. Since Man is here related to Nature, and is himself natural, he has this character only within the sphere of religion, and consequently we have here to consider Nature and Man from the point of view of religion. The Son comes into the world, and this is the beginning of faith. When we speak of the coming of the Son into the world we are already using the language of faith. God cannot really exist for the finite spirit as such, for in the very fact that God exists for it it is directly involved that the finite spirit does not maintain its finitude as something having Being, but that it stands in a certain relation to Spirit and is reconciled to God. In its character as the finite spirit it is represented as in a state of revolt and separation with regard to God. It is thus in contradiction with what is its own object and content, and in this contradiction lies the necessity for its abolition and elevation to a higher form. The necessity for this supplies the starting-point, and the next step in advance is that God exists for Spirit, that the divine content presents itself in a pictorial form to Spirit. Here, however, Spirit exists at the same time in an empirical and finite form, and thus what God is appears to Spirit in an empirical way. Since, however,


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 the Divine comes into view, and exists for Spirit in history of this kind, this history has no longer the character of outward history; it becomes divine history, the history of the manifestation of God Himself. This constitutes the transition to the Kingdom of the Spirit, in which we have the consciousness that Man is implicitly reconciled to God, and that this reconciliation exists for Man. The process of reconciliation itself is contained in Worship.

It has to be noted further that we do not, as we did previously, draw a distinction between Notion, Form, and Worship. It will become evident, as we go on to treat of the subject, that worship enters in directly everywhere. The following general remarks may here be made on this point. The element with which we have got to do is Spirit, and Spirit is what manifests itself, what essentially exists for self, or has actual existence, and as thus conceived of it never exists alone, but always possesses the character of something revealed, something which exists for an Other, for its own Other, i.e., for that side of Being which is represented by the finite spirit. Worship thus is the relation of the finite spirit to the absolute Spirit, and for this reason we find that this idea of worship is present in each of these elements.

In this connection a distinction has to be drawn between the Idea as it exists in the various elements for the Notion, and the Idea as it appears in the form of ordinary conception. Religion is universal, not only for thought which is marked by culture and intellectual grasp, for the philosophical consciousness; but the truth of the Idea of God is manifest also to the ordinary consciousness which represents things pictorially by ideas, and is marked by those necessary characteristics which are inseparable from the ordinary or popular ideas of things.


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 I.

GOD IN HIS ETERNAL IDEA IN-AND-FOR-SELF.

Thus, regarded in the element of thought, God is, so to speak, outside of or before the creation of the world. In so far as He is thus in Himself, He represents the eternal Idea which is not yet posited in its reality, but is itself as yet merely the abstract Idea.

Thus God in His eternal Idea still exists in the abstract element of thought, and not in that of notional comprehension. It is this pure Idea with which we are already acquainted. This is the element of thought, the Idea in its eternal presence, as it exists for free thought, whose fundamental characteristic is the untroubled light, self-identity, an element which is as yet unaffected by the presence of Being other than itself.

Within this sphere or element (1.) Determination is necessary, inasmuch as thought in general is different from thought which comprehends or grasps the process of Spirit. The eternal Idea in its essential existence, in-and-for-self, is present in thought, the Idea in its absolute truth. Religion has thus a content, and the content is an object; religion is the religion of men, and Man, besides his other qualities, is a thinking consciousness, and therefore the Idea must exist for thinking consciousness. But this is not all that Man is, for it is in the sphere of thought that he first finds his true nature, and it is only for thought that a universal object exists, only to thought can the essence of the object show itself; and since in religion God is the object, He is essentially an object for thought. He is object inasmuch as Spirit is consciousness, and He exists for thought because it is God who is the object.

For sensuous or reflective consciousness God cannot exist as God, i.e., in His eternal and absolute essentiality. His manifestation of Himself is something different from


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 this, and is made to sensuous consciousness. If God were present only in feeling, then men would be no higher than the beasts. It is true that He does exist for feeling too, but only in the region of appearance or manifestation. Nor does He exist for consciousness of the rationalistic type. Reflection is certainly thought too; but it has at the same time an accidental character, and because of this its content is something chosen at random, and is limited. God is certainly not a content of this kind. He thus exists essentially for thought. It is necessary to put the matter thus when we start from what is subjective, from Man. But this is the very truth we reach, too, when we start from God. Spirit exists for the spirit for which it does exist, only in so far as it reveals and differentiates itself, and this is the eternal Idea, thinking Spirit, Spirit in the element of its freedom. In this region God is the self-revealer, just because He is Spirit; but He is not yet present as outward manifestation. That God exists for Spirit is thus an essential principle.

Spirit is what thinks. Within this pure thought the relation is of an immediate kind, and there exists no difference between the two elements to differentiate them. Nothing comes between them. Thought is pure unity with itself, from which all that is obscure and dark has disappeared. This kind of thought may also be called pure intuition, as being the simple form of the activity of thought, so that there is nothing between the subject and the object, as these two do not yet really exist. This kind of thought has no limitation, it is universal activity, and its content is no other than the Universal itself; it is pure pulsation within itself.

2. It, however, passes further into the stage of absolute Diremption. How does this differentiation come about? Thought is actu, unlimited. The element of difference in its most immediate form consists in this that the two sides which we have seen to be the two sorts of modes in which the principle appears, show their


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 in their differing starting-points. The one side, subjective thought, is the movement of thought in so far as it starts from immediate individual Being, and, while within this, raises itself to what is Universal and Infinite, as is the case with the first proof of the existence of God. In so far as it has arrived at the stage of the Universal, thought is unlimited; its end is infinitely pure thought, so that all the mist of finitude has disappeared, and it here thinks God; every trace of separation has vanished, and thus religion, thinking upon God, begins. The second side is that which has for its starting-point the Universal, the result of that first movement, thought, the Notion. The Universal is, however, in its turn again an inner movement, and its nature is to differentiate itself within itself, and thus to preserve within itself the element of difference, but yet to do this in such a way as not to disturb the universality which is also there. Here universality is something which has this element of difference within itself, and is in harmony with itself. This represents the abstract content of thought, and this abstract thought is the result which has followed from what has taken place.

The two sides are thus mutually opposed or contrasted. Subjective Thought, the thought of the finite spirit, is a Process too, inner mediation; but this process goes on outside of it, or behind it. It is only in so far as subjective thought has raised itself to something higher that religion begins, and thus what we have in religion is pure motionless abstract thought. The concrete, on the other hand, is found in its Object, for this is the kind of thought which starts from the Universal, which differentiates itself, and consequently is in harmony with itself. It is this concrete element which is the object for thought, taking thought in a general sense. This kind of thought is thus abstract thought, and consequently the finite, for the abstract is finite; the concrete is the truth, the infinite object.

3. God is Spirit; in His abstract character He is


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 characterised as universal Spirit which particularises itself. This represents the absolute truth, and that religion is the true one which possesses this content.

Spirit is the process referred to; it is movement, life; its nature is to differentiate itself, to give itself a definite character, to determine itself; and the first form of the differentiation consists in this, that Spirit appears as the universal Idea itself. This Universal contains the entire Idea, but it only contains it, it is the Idea potentially only.

In the act of judgment or separation, the Other, what is put in contrast with the Universal, the Particular, is God as that which is distinguished from the Universal, but as implying that what is thus distinguished represents His entire Idea in-and-for-itself. Thus these two characteristics mean the same thing in reference to each other—mean that there is an identity between them, that they are one, that this difference is not merely done away with implicitly and that we are merely aware of this, but that the fact of their being the same has been brought forward into actuality or posited, and that these differences are done away with in so far as this differentiation just means that the difference is actually shown to be no difference, and thus the One is at home with itself in the Other.

The fact that this is so is just what is meant by Spirit, or, expressed in terms of feeling, by eternal Love. The Holy Spirit is eternal love. When we say God is love, we are expressing a very great and true thought; but it would be unreasonable merely to take this in such a simple way as a simple characterisation of God without analysing the meaning of love.

For love implies a distinguishing between two, and yet these two are, as a matter of fact, not distinguished from one another. Love, this sense of being outside of myself, is the feeling and consciousness of this identity. My self-consciousness is not in myself, but in another; but this Other in whom alone I find satisfaction and am at


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 peace with myself—and I exist only in so far as I am at peace with myself, for if I had not this inner peace I would be the contradiction which breaks itself up into parts—this Other, just because it is outside of me, has its self-consciousness only in me. Thus the two are represented simply by this consciousness of their being outside of themselves and of their identity, and this perception, this feeling, this knowledge of the unity, is love.

God is love; i.e., He represents the distinction referred to, and the nullity of this distinction, the sort of play of this act of distinction which is not to be taken seriously, and which is therefore posited as something abolished, i.e., as the eternal, simple Idea.

This eternal Idea, accordingly, finds expression in the Christian religion under the name of the Holy Trinity, and this is God Himself, the eternal Triune God.

Here God exists only for the man who thinks, who keeps within the quiet of his own mind. The ancients called this enthusiasm; it is pure theoretic contemplation, the supreme repose of thought, but at the same time its highest activity manifested in grasping the pure Idea of God and becoming conscious of this Idea. The mystery of the dogma of God’s nature is disclosed to men; they believe in it, and have already vouchsafed to them the highest truth, although they apprehend it only in the form of a popular or figurative idea, without being conscious of the necessary nature of this truth, and without grasping it in its entirety or comprehending it. Truth is the unveiling of what Spirit is in-and-for-itself. Man is himself Spirit, and therefore the truth exists for him. To begin with, however, the truth which comes to him does not yet possess for him the form of freedom; it is for him merely something given and received, which, however, he can receive only because he is Spirit. This truth, this Idea, has been called the dogma of the Trinity. God is Spirit, the activity of pure thought, the activity which is not outside of itself, which is within the sphere


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 of its own being. It was Aristotle chiefly who conceived of God under the abstract determination of activity. Pure activity is knowledge (in the scholastic period actus purus); but in order that it may actually appear as activity, it has to be posited in its moments or stages. Knowledge implies the existence of an Other or object which is consciously known, and since it is knowledge which knows it, it is reckoned as belonging to it. This explains how God, who represents Being in-and-for-self, eternally produces Himself in the form of His Son, distinguishes Himself from Himself, and is the absolute act of judgment or differentiation. What He thus distinguishes from Himself does not take on the form of something which is other than Himself; but, on the contrary, what is thus distinguished is nothing more nor less than that from which it has been distinguished. God is Spirit; and no darkness, no colouring or mixture enters into this pure light. The relation between Father and Son is expressed in terms of organic life, and is used in the popular or figurative sense. This natural relation is merely pictorial, and, accordingly, never entirely corresponds to the truth that is sought to be expressed. We say that God eternally begets His Son, that God distinguishes Himself from Himself, and thus we begin to say of God that He does this, and that in being in the Other whom He has brought into definite existence, or posited, He is simply with Himself, has not gone outside of Himself, and this is the form of love; but, at the same time, we ought to know that God is Himself just this entire act. God is the beginning; He does this definite thing; but He is equally the end only, the totality, and it is as totality that God is Spirit. God thought of simply as the Father is not yet the True. (Thus in the Jewish religion He is conceived of without the Son.) He is, on the contrary, Beginning and End; He is His own presupposition, He constitutes Himself His presupposition—this is simply another form of the fact of


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 differentiation—He is the eternal Process. The fact that this is the truth, and the absolute truth, appears rather in the form of something given or taken for granted. That this should be consciously known as the entire and absolute truth, the truth in-and-for-itself, is, however, just the work of philosophy, and is the entire content of philosophy. In it it is seen how all that constitutes Nature and Spirit presses forward in a dialectic form to this central point as to its absolute truth. Here we are not concerned to prove that the dogma, this silent mystery, is the eternal Truth. That is done, as has been said, in the whole of philosophy.

By way of giving a more definite explanation of these characteristics, we may further call attention to the following points:—

(a.) When the intention is to express what God is, the attributes are what is first thought of. These attributes are God; He is defined by means of predicates, and this is a mode of expressing the truth which is characteristic of the ordinary thought, of the understanding. Predicates are definite characteristics, particularisations, such as goodness, almighty power, &c.

The predicates certainly do not represent natural immediacy, but have got a permanence by means of reflection, and in this way the definite content which they represent has become immovably fixed in itself, exactly as is the natural content by means of which God is represented in the religion of Nature. Natural objects, such as the sun, the sea, &c., are, they exist; but the determinations of reflection are as much self-identical as is natural immediacy.

As Orientals have a feeling that this is not the true mode of expressing the nature of God, they say that He is πολυώνυμος, that His nature cannot be exhausted by predicates, for names are in this connection the same as predicates.

What is really defective in this way of defining God


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 by means of predicates is that these predicates are only particular characterisations, and that there are many such particular characterisations, and that it is the subject as essentially undifferentiated to which they are attached; and this explains, too, how there comes to be such an infinite number of predicates. Since there are particular determinations, and since these particularisations are viewed in accordance with their determinateness, and are made the subject of thought, they come to be in opposition or contradiction with each other, and these contradictions accordingly are not harmonised.

This is further seen when these predicates are taken as expressing the relation of God to the world, and when the world is thought of as something different from God. Being particularisations, they cannot adequately express His nature, and this explains that other way of considering them as expressing certain relations between God and the world, such as the omnipresence, the infinite wisdom of God in the world.

They do not contain the true relation of God to Himself, but to an Other, the world namely, and thus they are limited, and in this way get to be contradictory. We have the feeling that God is not represented in this way as living when so many particular features are counted up one after the other. Nor is the contradiction which they involve truly harmonised by taking away their determinateness when the Understanding demands that they should be taken merely sensu eminentiori. The true harmony or solution of the contradiction is contained in the Idea, which is the self-determination of God to the act of distinguishing Himself from Himself, but is at the same time the eternal abolition of the distinction.

If the element of difference were left remaining, there would be contradiction, and if this difference were permanent, then finitude would arise. Both are independent in reference to each other, and they are in relation to each other as well. It is not the nature of the Idea to allow


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 the difference to remain; but, on the contrary, its nature is just to resolve or cancel the difference. God posits Himself in this element of difference, but He also abolishes it as well.

When accordingly we attach predicates to God in such a way as to make them particular, our first concern is to harmonise this contradiction. This is an external act, the act of our reflection, and consequently, owing to the fact that it is external and takes place in us, and is not the content of the Divine Idea, it follows that the contradictions cannot be harmonised. The Idea in its very nature implies the abolition of the contradiction. Its essential content and nature consists in the very fact that it posits this difference and cancels it absolutely, and this represents the living nature of the Idea itself.

(b.) In the metaphysical proofs of the existence of God, we can see that, in passing from Notion to Being, the Notion is not thought of merely as Notion, but as existing also, as having reality. It is in connection with the standpoint with which we are now dealing, that the necessity arises of making the transition from the Notion to Being.

The divine Notion is the pure Notion, the Notion without any limitation whatsoever. The Idea implies that the Notion determines itself, and consequently posits itself as something different from itself. This is a moment or stage of the divine Idea itself, and just because the thinking, reflecting spirit has this content before it, there arises the necessity for this transition, this forward movement.

The logical element of this transition is contained in those so-called proofs. It is within the Notion itself, and with the Notion as the starting-point, and, in fact, by means of the Notion, that the transition must be made to objectivity, to Being, and this in the element of thought. This which appears in the form of a subjective necessity is content, is the one moment of the divine Idea itself.


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 When we say, God has created a world, we imply that there has been a transition from the Notion to objectivity, only the world is here characterised as essentially God’s Other, and as being the negation of God, outside of God, without God, godless. In so far as the world is defined as this Other, the difference does not present itself to us as being in the Notion itself or as contained in the Notion; i.e., Being, Objectivity must be shown to be in the Notion, must be shown to exist in the form of activity, consequence, determination of the Notion itself.

It is thus shown, at the same time, that this is implicitly the same content, that the necessity for transition is seen in the form of the proof of the existence of God referred to. In the absolute Idea, in the element of thought, God is this purely concrete Universal, i.e., He is thought of as positing Himself as an Other, but in such a way that this Other is immediately and directly characterised as God Himself, and the difference as being merely ideal is directly done away with, and does not attain to the form of externality, and this just means that what has thus been posited as difference has been shown to exist in and to be involved in the Notion.

It is characteristic of the logical sphere in which this shows itself that it is the nature of every definite conception or notion to annul itself, to be its own contradiction, and consequently to appear as its own difference, and to posit itself as such. Thus the Notion itself is still affected by this element of one-sidedness and finitude, and is something subjective; and the characteristics of the Notion, its differences, are posited as ideal merely, and do not actually appear in a definite form as differences. Such is the Notion which gives itself an objective form.

When we say God, we speak of Him merely as abstract; or when we say God the Father, the Universal, we speak of Him in terms of finite existence merely. His infinitude consists just in this, that He does away


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 with this form of abstract universality, of immediacy, and in this way difference is posited; but it is just His very nature to abolish this difference. It is consequently then only that He is truly reality, truth, infinitude.

This Idea is the speculative or philosophical Idea, i.e., the rational element, and inasmuch as it is reached by thinking, it is the act of thinking upon what is rational. Thought which is not speculative, thought which is the product of the Understanding, is the thought which does not get beyond difference as difference, nor beyond the finite and the infinite. Both have an absoluteness attributed to them, and yet they are thought of as being in relation to each other, and as so far constituting a unity, and consequently as having in them the element of contradiction.

(c.) This speculative Idea stands opposed to the sense element in thought and also to the Understanding. It is consequently a secret or mystery to the senses and their way of looking at things, and to the Understanding also. For both it is a μυστήριον, i.e., so far as regards what is rational in it. The nature of God is indeed not a mystery in the ordinary sense of the term, and least of all in the Christian religion, for in it God has communicated the knowledge of Himself, He has shown what He is, He has revealed Himself; but it is a mystery for sense-perception, for idea or ordinary thought, for the senses and their way of looking at things, and for the Understanding.

Speaking generally, the fundamental characteristic of the sensuous is externality, the idea of things as being outside of one another. In space the differences are contiguous, in time they are successive. Space and Time represent the externality in which they exist. Thus it is characteristic of the mode of regarding things which belongs to the senses, that differences should present themselves as lying outside of one another.


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 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


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 remain unalterably independent in relation to each other. The Positive is not the same as the Negative, as, for example, cause-effect.

But, so far as the Notion is concerned, it is equally true that these differences cancel themselves. It is just because they are differences that they remain finite, and it is the nature of the Understanding to stick to the finite, and even when it is dealing with the Infinite itself it has the Infinite on the one side and the finite on the other.

The real truth is that the finite, and the Infinite which is put in contrast with the finite, have no true existence, but are themselves merely transitory. So far this is a secret for the sensuous way of conceiving of things and for the Understanding, and they struggle against the element of rationality in the Idea. Those who oppose the doctrine of the Trinity are men who are guided merely by their senses and understanding.

The Understanding is equally powerless to grasp the meaning of anything else whatever, or to get at the truth regarding anything. Animal life also exists as Idea, as a unity of the notion or conception of the soul and bodily form. For the Understanding each of these exists for itself. They are undoubtedly different, but it is equally their nature to abolish this difference. Life is simply this perennial process. What has life exists; it has impulses, needs, and consequently it has within itself difference, and this originates within it. There thus comes to be a contradiction, and the Understanding takes these differences as implying that the contradiction does not cancel itself; when they are brought into relation with each other nothing exists but just the contradiction, which cannot be cancelled.

The contradiction is there; it cannot cease to exist if the elements of difference are held to be perennial elements of difference, just because it is the fact of this difference that is insisted upon. What has life has certain needs,


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 and thus involves a contradiction, but the satisfaction of these is the removal of the contradiction.

In the case of impulse, in the presence of any need, I am distinguished from myself, and this within myself. But life just means the harmonising of the contradiction, the satisfying of the need, the attainment of peace, in such a way, however, that a contradiction springs up again. What we have is the alternation of the act of differentiation or contradiction, and of the removal of the contradiction.

The two are different in point of time, the element of succession is present in connection with them, and they are on that account finite. Here, too, the Understanding, in considering impulse and the satisfaction of impulse by themselves, fails to grasp the truth that in the very act of affirmation, in the very feeling of self, there is at the same time contained the negation of the feeling of self, limitation, defect, and yet I as having this feeling of self at once pass beyond this element of defect.

This is the ordinary definite idea of a μυστήριον. A mystery is also described as the incomprehensible; but it is just the Notion itself, the speculative element in thought, which is described as incomprehensible, the fact that what is rational is stated in terms of thought. It is just by means of thought that the element of difference is definitely developed.

The thinking of the impulse is merely the analysis of what the impulse is; the affirmation and the negation involved in it, the feeling of self, the satisfaction of the impulse and the impulse. To think it is just to recognise the element of difference which is in it. When, accordingly, the Understanding gets so far, it says: this is a contradiction, and it remains at this point, it holds by the contradiction in face of experience, which teaches that life itself just means the removal of the contradiction.

Thus, when the impulse is analysed, the contradiction comes to light, and then it can be said: impulse is


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 incomprehensible. The nature of God is equally something incomprehensible. This Incomprehensible is really nothing but the Notion itself, which involves the power of differentiation, and the Understanding does not get beyond the fact of the existence of the difference.

Thus it says: this cannot be comprehended; for the principle of the Understanding is abstract self-identity, and not concrete identity, according to which these differences exist in something which is one. For the Understanding God is the One, the Essence of Essences. This empty identity without difference is the false representation of God given by the Understanding and by modern theology. God is Spirit, what gives itself an objective form and knows itself in that. This is concrete identity, and thus the Idea is also an essential moment. According to the idea of abstract identity, on the other hand, the One and the Other exist independently, each for itself, and are at the same time related to each other, and therefore we get a contradiction.

This, then, is what is called the incomprehensible. The cancelling or resolution of the contradiction is the Notion; the Understanding does not get the length of the cancelling of the contradiction, because it starts with the presupposition of its existence; for it the two sides which form the contradiction are and remain in a state of mutual independence.

One reason why it is said that the Divine Idea is incomprehensible is that, since religion, the truth, exists for all men, the content of the Idea appears in a sensuous form, or in the form of something which can be grasped by the Understanding. It appears, we repeat, in a sensuous form, and so we have the expressions Father and Son descriptive of a relation which exists in the sphere of life, a designation which has been adopted from what is seen in the sense-life.

In religion the truth is revealed in accordance with the content; but it is something different for it to appear


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 in the form of the Notion, of thought, or as the Notion in a speculative form. However happily expressed those naive forms, such as begetting, son, &c., given to faith, may be, whenever the Understanding takes them in hand and applies its categories to them, they are at once perverted, and whenever it is in the mood it does not cease to point out the contradictions involved in them. It gets the power and the right to do this from the differentiation and reflection into themselves which exist in these forms. But it is just God or Spirit who Himself abolishes these contradictions. He does not require to wait for the Understanding to remove those characteristics which contain contradiction. It is just the very nature of Spirit to remove them; and so, too, it belongs essentially to Spirit to posit these characteristics, to make distinctions within itself, to bring about this separation or diremption.

When, again, we say that the idea of God in His eternal universality implies that He differentiates Himself, determines Himself, posits something that is His Other or object, and at the same time abolishes the difference, is not outside of Himself in the difference, and is Spirit only through what He thus accomplishes, then we get another example of how the Understanding treats the question. It takes up this thought, brings its categories of finitude to bear upon it, counts one, two, three, and introduces into it the unfortunate category of number. Here, however, we have nothing to do with number; numeration is something which implies utter absence of thought, and if we introduce this category here we introduce the element of incomprehensibility.

It is possible in the exercise of Reason to make use of all the categories of the Understanding which imply relation. Reason, however, does not only use them, it destroys them, and so, too, here. This is indeed hard for the Understanding, since it imagines that because they have been made use of they have won some kind of right


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 to exist. They are, however, misused when, as here, they are used in connection with the expression, three are one. It is accordingly easy to point out that there are contradictions in such ideas, differences which get the length of being opposites, and the sterile Understanding prides itself on amassing these. In all that is concrete, in all that has life, this contradiction is involved, as has been already shown. It is only the dead Understanding that is self-identical. In the Idea, on the other hand, we see the contradiction cancelled as well, and it is just this cancelling or harmonising which is spiritual unity.

To enumerate the moments of the Idea as three units appears to be something quite ingenuous and natural, and which does not require to be explained. Only, in accordance with the nature of number, which is here introduced into the matter, each characteristic gets a fixed form as one, and we are required to conceive of three units as only one unit, a demand which it is extremely hard to entertain, and which is, as is sometimes said, an utterly irrational demand.

It is the Understanding alone that is always haunted by this idea of the absolute independence of the unit or One, this idea of absolute separation and rupture. If, on the contrary, we regard the matter from the point of view of logic, we see that the One has an inner dialectic movement, and is not truly independent. It is only necessary to think of matter which is the true One or unity that offers resistance, but which is subject to the law of gravitation, i.e., it makes an effort not to be one, and rather to do away with its state of independence, and thus confesses that this is a nullity. In fact, just because it is only matter, and continues to be the most external externality, it remains in the condition merely of something which ought to be. Matter as such is the poorest, most external, most unspiritual mode of existence; but it is gravitation, or the abolition of the oneness, which constitutes the fundamental characteristic of matter.


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 The idea of a unit or a One is, to begin with, something wholly abstract; these units get a still deeper meaning when they are expressed in terms of Spirit since they are characterised as persons. Personality is something which is essentially based on freedom, freedom in its first, deepest, most inward form, but also in its most abstract form as the freedom which proclaims its presence in the subject by saying, I am a person, I exist for myself. This is isolation pure and simple, a condition of pure reserve.

When, therefore, these differences are defined thus, and each is taken as a unit, or in fact as a person, owing to the infinite form according to which each moment is regarded as a subject, the difficulty of satisfying the demand of the Idea that these differences should be regarded as differences which are not different, but are purely one, and that this difference should be abolished, appears to be still more insurmountable.

Two cannot be one; each person has a rigid, reserved, independent, self-centred existence. Logic shows that the category of the unit is a poor category, a wholly abstract unit. But when we are dealing with personality, the contradiction seems to be pushed so far as to be incapable of any solution; still the solution is contained in the fact that there is only one person, and this threefold personality, this personality which is consequently posited merely as a vanishing moment, expresses the truth that the antithesis is an absolute one, and is not to be taken as an inferior antithesis, and that it is just exactly when it has got to this point it abolishes itself. It is, in short, the nature or character of what we mean by person or subject to abolish its isolation, its separateness.

Morality, love, just mean the giving up of particularity or of the particular personality and its extension to universality, and so, too, is it with the family and friendship, for there you have the identity of the one with the other. Inasmuch as I act rightly towards another, I consider him as identical with myself. In friendship and


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 love I give up my abstract personality, and in this way win it back as concrete personality.

It is just this winning back of personality by the act of absorption, by the being absorbed into the other, which constitutes the true nature of personality. Such forms of the Understanding directly prove themselves in experience to be of those which annul themselves.

In love, in friendship, it is the person or individual who maintains himself, and by means of love gets the subjectivity which is his personality. If here, in connection with religion, the idea of personality is clung to in an abstract way, then we get three Gods, and the infinite form, absolute negativity is forgotten, or if personality is regarded as not cancelled, then we have evil, for personality which does not yield itself up to the absolute Idea is evil. In the divine unity personality is held to be cancelled, and it is only in appearance that the negativity of personality is distinguished from that whereby it is done away with.

The Trinity has been reduced to a relation of Father, Son, and Spirit, and this is a childlike relation, a childlike natural form. The Understanding has no category, no relation which in point of suitability for expressing the truth can be compared with this. At the same time it must be understood that it is merely pictorial, and that Spirit does not actually enter into a relation of this kind. Love would be a still more suitable expression, but Spirit is the really true one.

The abstract God, the Father, is the Universal, the eternal, all-embracing, total particularity. We have reached the stage of Spirit; here the Universal includes everything within itself; the Other, the Son, is infinite particularity, manifestation; the third, the Spirit, is individuality as such. The Universal, however, as totality is itself Spirit; all three are Spirit. In the third, God is Spirit, we say, but He is presupposed to be this as well, and the third is also the first. This is a truth which


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 must be held to as essential. When, for instance, we say that God, in accordance with His conception or notion, is potentially the immediate Power which differentiates itself and returns to itself, it is implied that He is this only as being negativity which is immediately related to itself, i.e., as absolute reflection into self, which is just the characteristic of Spirit. Should we, accordingly, wish to speak of God as presented in His first determination, in accordance with His Notion, and should we wish to go on from this to the other determinations, we are already speaking of the third; the last is the first. When, in order to avoid this, and if we begin in an abstract way, we speak of the first only in accordance with its own determination, or when the imperfection of the notion renders it necessary to do this, then the first is the Universal, and that activity, that begetting or creating, is already a principle distinct from the abstract-Universal, which thus appears and can appear as a second principle, as something which manifests itself, externalises itself (Logos, Sophia), just as the first exists as the abyss of Being. This is made clear by the nature of the Notion itself. It comes to the front in connection with every end and with every manifestation of life. Life maintains itself; to maintain or preserve means to pass into difference, into the struggle with particularity, means that something finds itself to be distinct from inorganic nature. Life is thus only a resultant inasmuch as it has brought itself into being, is a product which in turn produces; what is thus produced is itself living, i.e., it is its own presupposition, it passes through its process, and nothing new comes out of this; what is produced was already there from the beginning. The same holds true of love and reciprocal love. In so far as love exists, it is the beginning, and all action is merely its confirmation by which it is at once produced and nourished. But what is produced already exists, it is confirmation of the presence of love, since nothing comes out of it but what is already


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 there. In the same way Spirit presupposes itself, it is what begins.

The differentiation through which the Divine Life passes is not of an external kind, but must be defined as an inward differentiation in such a way that the First, or the Father, is to be conceived of as the Last. The process is thus nothing but the play of self-preservation or self-confirmation. This characteristic is of importance in this respect that it constitutes the criterion by which to estimate the value of many of the popular conceptions of God, and by which what is defective in them can be detected and criticised, and it is specially owing to the presence of that defective element that this characteristic is often overlooked or misunderstood.

We are considering the Idea in its universality, as it exists in pure thought, and as defined by means of pure thought. This Idea is all truth and the one truth, and consequently everything particular which is to be conceived of as true must be conceived of in accordance with the Form of this Idea.

Nature and the finite spirit are a product of God, and therefore possess rationality. The fact that they have been made by God involves their having truth in themselves, divine truth in general, i.e., the characteristic of this Idea considered generally.

The Form of this Idea exists in God only as Spirit; if the Divine Idea exists in those forms which belong to finitude, it is not in that case posited in its true and entire nature, in-and-for-self; it is only in Spirit that it is so posited. In these finite forms it exists in a finite way; but the world is something which has been produced by God, and therefore the Divine Idea always constitutes its basis if we consider it in a general aspect. To know the truth regarding anything just means to know it and define it in accordance with the form of this Idea.

In the earlier religions, particularly in the religion of India, we have ideas which are in accord with that of the


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 Trinity as the true determination. This idea of threefoldness was actually consciously reached, the idea that the One cannot continue to exist as One and has not the true form it ought to have, that the One does not represent the truth except as it appears in the form of movement, of difference in general, and as standing in relation to some other. Trimurti is the rudest form in which this determination appears.

The third is not, however, Spirit, is not true reconciliation, but origination and decay, change in fact, a category which is a unity of these differences, but represents a union of a very subordinate kind.

It is not in immediate Appearance or manifestation, but only when Spirit has taken up its abode in the Church, when it is immediate, believing Spirit, and raises itself to the stage of thought, that the Idea reaches perfection. We are interested in considering the workings or ferment of this Idea, and in learning to recognise what lies at the basis of the marvellous manifestations which occur. The definition of God as the Three-in-One is one which, so far as philosophy is concerned, has quite ceased to be used, and in theology it is no longer seriously adopted. In fact, in certain quarters an attempt has been made to belittle the Christian religion by maintaining that this definition which it employs is already older than Christianity, and that it has got it from somewhere or other. But, to begin with, any such historical statement does not for that matter of it decide anything whatsoever with regard to the inner truth. It must, moreover, be understood, too, that those peoples and individuals of former ages were not themselves conscious of the truth which was in the idea, and did not perceive that it contained the absolute consciousness of the truth; they regarded it as merely one amongst other characteristics, and as different from the others. But it is a point of the greatest importance to determine whether such a characteristic is the first and absolute characteristic which


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 underlies all others, or whether it is just one form which appears amongst others, as, for instance, in the case of Brahmā, who is the One, but is not at the same time an object of worship. This form has certainly the least chance of appearing in the Religion of Beauty and in that of External Utility. In the multiplicity and particularisation which are characteristic of these religions, it is not possible to meet with the element of measure which limits itself and returns to itself. Still they are not devoid of traces of this unity. Aristotle, speaking of the Pythagorean numbers, of the triad, says: We believe that we have really called on the gods only when we have called on them three times. Amongst the Pythagoreans and in Plato we come upon the abstract basis of the Idea, but the characteristics do not in any way get beyond this condition of abstraction, and partly continue in the abstract state represented by one, two, three; though in Plato they get a rather more concrete form, where we have described the nature of the One and the Other, that which is different in itself, θάτερον, and the third which is the unity of both.

The thought here is not of the fanciful kind which we have in the Indian religions, but is rather a mere abstraction. We have actual categories of thought which are better than numbers, better than the category of number, but which, all the same, are entirely abstract categories of thought.

It is, however, chiefly about the time of Christ’s birth, and during several centuries after, that we come upon a philosophical representation of this truth in a figurative form, and which has for its basis the popular idea expressed by the Trinity. It is found partly in philosophical systems pure and simple, such as that of Philo, who had carefully studied Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy, and then in the later writers of the Alexandrian School, but more especially in a blending of the Christian religion with philosophical ideas of the kind referred to, and it is this blending of the two which constitutes in a large


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 measure the various heresies, particularly the Gnostic heresy. Speaking generally, we see in these attempts to grasp the Idea of the Three-in-One, the reality which characterises Western thought refined away into an intellectual world through the influence of Eastern idealism. These are, to be sure, only first attempts resulting in what were merely paltry and fantastic conceptions. Still we can see in them at least the struggle of Spirit to reach truth, and this deserves recognition.

An almost countless number of forms of stating the truth may be observed here; the First is, the Father, the Ὄν, terms which express something which is the abyss or depths of Being, i.e., something, in fact, which is as yet empty, which cannot be grasped by thought, but is incomprehensible and beyond the power of any conception to express.

For what is empty, indeterminate, is undoubtedly the Incomprehensible, the negative of the Notion, and it is the nature of its notion to be this negative since it is merely one-sided abstraction, and constitutes what is merely a moment of the Notion. The One for itself, is not yet the Notion, the True.

If the First is defined as the merely Universal, and if the definitions or determinations are simply referred to the Universal, to the ὄν, then we certainly get the incomprehensible, for it is without content; anything comprehensible is concrete, and can be comprehended only in so far as it is determined as a moment. And it is in this that the defect lies, namely, that the First is not conceived of as being by its very nature totality.

Another idea of the same kind is expressed when it is said that the First is the βυθός, the Abyss, the depths, ἄιών, the Eternal, whose dwelling is in the inexpressible heights, who is raised above all contact with finite things, out of whom nothing is evolved, the First Principle, the Father of all existence, the Propator, who is a Father only mediately, the προαρχη, He who was before the


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. The revelation of this abyss of Being, of this hidden God, is defined as self-contemplation, reflection into self, concrete determination in general; self-contemplation begets, it is, in fact, the begetting of the Only-begotten; this represents the fact that the Eternal is in process of being comprehended, because here we get the length of determination.

This Second, Other-Being or object, determination, action in short as shown in self-determination, is the most general determination, as it appears in the form of the λόγος, the activity which determines itself after the manner of reason, known also as the Word. The Word is this simple self-expression which does not make any hard and fast distinction, and does not become a hard and fast distinction, but is taken in an immediate sense, and which being thus immediate is taken up into the inner life of the Eternal, and returns to its original source. It is further expressed by the word σοφία, Wisdom, the original Man in the absolute purity of his Being, something which actually exists, and is other than that first universality—in short, a particular something with a definite character. God is the Creator, and He is this in His specific character as the Logos, as the self-externalising, self-expressing Word, as the ὅρασις, the vision of God.

This Second came to be further defined as the archetype of Man, Adam Kadmon, the Only-begotten. This does not describe some accidental characteristic, but, on the contrary, eternal action, which is not confined simply to one time. In God there is only one birth, activity in the form of eternal activity, a characteristic which essentially belongs to the Universal itself.

Here we have the true differentiation or distinction which has reference to the quality of both, but this quality is only one and the same Substance, and the difference is accordingly merely superficial as yet even when defined as a person.

The essential point is that this σοφία, the


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, remains likewise in the bosom of God, and the distinction is no real distinction.

It was in forms such as these that the Idea showed its workings. The most important point of view from which to regard the matter is that which will enable us to see that, however rude were the shapes taken by these thoughts, they are to be considered as rational, and from which we shall perceive that they are based on reason, and discover what amount of reason is in them. Still it is necessary at the same time to be able to distinguish the form of rationality which is present, and which is not yet adequate to express content.

This Idea is usually put somewhere beyond Man, beyond thought and reason, and forms an antithesis to these, so that this characteristic, which is all truth, and alone is truth, comes to be regarded as something peculiar to God only, something which remains in a region beyond human life, and does not reflect itself into its Other, which appears in the form of the world, Nature, Man. So far this fundamental idea is not regarded as the Universal Idea.

To Jacob Böhme this mystery of the threefold nature became clear in another fashion. His way of conceiving of the truth, and his style of thought, are certainly of a rather wild and fantastic sort. He did not attain to the use of the pure forms of thought, but the ruling and fundamental principle of all the ideas which fermented in his mind, and of all his struggles to reach the truth, was the recognition of the presence of Trinity everywhere and in everything, as, e.g., when he says, “It must be born in the heart of Man.”

It forms the universal basis of everything which is looked at in a true way, it may indeed be as finite, but still as something which even in its finitude has the truth in it. Thus Jacob Böhme attempted to represent under this category Nature and the heart or spirit of Man.

In more recent times the conception of Trinity has,


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 20 Sverre had taken much trouble over the rights of the question. Against the new law which the Bishops had tried to establish in 1164, which would have made the king vassal of the Church, Sverre had drawn up a full statement, one of the clearest and most interesting of political arguments, which asserts the Divine Right of Kings apart from any ecclesiastical interference, and proves it against the Churchmen by citations from the Canon Law. The old Birkibeins did not trouble themselves much about the science of politics, but their watchword, the Law of St. Olaf, meant in practice what Sverre had meant both in practice and in theory. The good fortune of the young Hacon was that he grew up among the veterans into a full comprehension of the ideas of Sverre. So that in this case, at any rate, the Carlylean ideal is not refuted by the death of the champion, or by the collapse of all his work under some foolish Ishbosheth of a successor. It looked like that, it is true, for some years after the death of Sverre—it looked as if the deluge had come back. But this was prevented by the fixed idea of the old partisans, and by the education of Hacon; all which is clearly brought out in Sturla's biography.

There are two Norwegian essays on Monarchy which may very fairly be contrasted with Sturla's Icelandic portrait of a king of Norway. They are both didactic: one is Sverre's treatise, already mentioned; the other is the Speculum Regale, or King's Mirror (Konungs Skuggsjá'), written in the ordinary conventional form of a dialogue between a father and son, but very original and lively in its matter. The father is a king's man, as he calls himself, and among many other things he tells his views about the nature of a king and the manners of a Court: how one should demean himself in the

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 through the influence of the Kantian philosophy, been brought into notice again in an outward way as a type, and, as it were, as a ground-plan of thought, and this in very definite forms of thought. When this Idea is thus known to represent what is the one and essential nature of God, the next step is to cease to regard it as something belonging to a region above human thought and beyond this world, and to feel that the goal of knowledge is the recognition of the truth in the Particular as well, and if it is thus recognised as present in it, then all that is true in the Particular involves this determination. To know in the philosophical sense, means to know anything in its determinateness. Its nature, however, is just the nature of the determinateness itself, and it is unfolded in the Idea. Logical exposition and logical necessity mean that this Idea represents truth in general, and that all thought-determinations can be reduced to this movement of determination.

II.

THE ETERNAL IDEA OF GOD IN THE ELEMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND ORDINARY THOUGHT (VORSTELLEN), OR, DIFFERENCE; THE KINGDOM OF THE SON.

We have here to consider how this Idea passes out of its condition of universality and infinity into the determination or specific form of finitude. God is everywhere present, and the presence of God is just the element of truth which is in everything.

To begin with, the Idea was found in the element of thought. This forms the basis, and we started with it. The Universal, and what is consequently the more abstract, must precede all else in scientific knowledge. Looking at the matter from a scientific point of view, it is what comes first, though actually it is what comes later, so far as its existence in a definite form is


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. It is what is potential and essential, but it is what appears later in knowledge, and reaches the stage of consciousness and knowledge later.

The Form of the Idea actually appears as a result which, however, is essentially potentiality; and just as the content of the Idea means that the last is the first and the first is the last, so what appears as a result is the presupposition, potentiality, basis. This Idea is now to be considered as it appears in the second element, in the element of manifestation in general. In its form as objectivity, or as potential, the absolute Idea is complete; but this is not the case with the Idea in its subjective aspect, either in itself as such, or when subjectivity actually appears in the Divine Idea. The progress of the Idea here referred to may be looked at from two sides.

Looking at it from the first of these, we see that the subject for which this Idea exists is the thinking subject. Even the forms used by ordinary conception do not take anything from the nature of the fundamental form, nor hinder this fundamental form from being for man a form characterised by thought. The subject, speaking generally, exists as something which thinks, it thinks this Idea, and yet it is concrete self-consciousness. This Idea must exist for the subject as concrete self-consciousness, as an actual subject.

Or it may be put thus—the Idea in its first form is the absolute truth, while in its subjective form it exists for thought; but not only must the Idea be truth for the subject, the subject on its part must have the certainty of the Idea, i.e., the certainty which belongs to this subject as such, as finite, as a subject which is empirical, concrete, and belonging to the sphere of sense.

The Idea possesses certainty for the subject, and the subject has this certainty only in so far as the Idea is actually perceived, in so far as it exists for the subject. If I can say of anything, “that is,” then it possesses


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 certainty for me, this is immediate knowledge, this is certainty. The next form of mediation consists in proving that what is is likewise necessary, that it is true, that it is something certain. This accordingly is the transition to the Universal.

By starting from the form of truth, we have reached the definite thought that this form possesses certainty, that it exists for me.

The other mode of viewing the advance of the Idea to manifestation is to regard it from the side of the Idea itself.

1. Eternal Being, in-and-for-itself, is something which unfolds itself, determines itself, differentiates itself, posits itself as its own difference, but the difference, again, is at the same time eternally done away with and absorbed; what has essential Being, Being in-and-for-itself, eternally returns to itself in this, and only in so far as it does this is it Spirit.

What is differentiated is determined in such a way that the difference directly disappears, and so, that this is seen to be a relation of God merely to Himself, of the Idea merely to itself. This act of differentiation is merely a movement, a playing of love with itself, in which it does not get to be otherness or Other-Being in any serious sense, nor actually reach a condition of separation and division.

The Other is defined as the Son, as love regarded from the side of feeling, or, defined from a higher point of view, as Spirit which is not outside of itself, which is with itself, which is free. In this determination, the determination of difference is not yet complete so far as the Idea is concerned. What we have here is merely abstract difference in general, we have not yet got to difference in the form which peculiarly belongs to it; difference here is only one characteristic or determination amongst others.

In this respect we can say that we have not yet got the length of difference. The things differentiated are


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 considered to be the same; we have not yet reached that determination according to which the things differentiated should have a different determination. Regarded from this side, we have to think of the judgment or differentiating act of the Idea as implying that the Son gets the determination of the Other as such, that He exists as a free personality, independently or for Himself, that He appears as something real outside of and apart from God, as something, in fact, which actually is.

His ideality, His eternal return into essential Being, is posited in the Idea in its first form as immediate and identical. In order that there may be difference, and in order that it may be properly recognised, it is necessary to have the element of Otherness, necessary that what is thus distinguished should appear as Otherness which is possessed of Being.

It is only the absolute Idea which determines itself, and which, in determining itself, is inwardly certain that it is absolutely free in itself; and in thus determining itself it implies that what is thus determined is allowed to exist as something which is free, as something independent, as an independent object. The Free exists only for the Free, and it is only for free men that an other is free too.

The absolute freedom of the Idea means that in determining itself, in the act of judgment, or differentiation, it grants the free independent existence of the Other. This Other, as something thus allowed to have an independent existence, is represented by the World taken in a general sense. The absolute act of judgment which gives independence to that aspect of Being called Other-Being might also be called Goodness, which bestows upon this side of Being in its state of estrangement the whole Idea, in so far as and in the way in which it is able to receive and represent the Idea.

2. The truth of the world is its ideality only, and does not imply that it possesses true reality; it is involved in its


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 nature that it should be, but only in an ideal sense; it is not something implicitly eternal, but, on the contrary, it is something created, its Being is something which has been merely posited, or is dependent on something else.

The Being of the world means that it has a moment of Being, but that it annuls this separation and estrangement from God, and that it is its true nature to return to its source, to get into a relationship of Spirit or Love.

We thus get the Process of the world which implies a passing from the state of revolt and separation to that of reconciliation. What first appears in the Idea is merely the relation of Father and Son; but the Other also comes to have the characteristic of Other-Being or otherness, of something which is.

It is in the Son, in the determination or specifying of the difference, that an advance is made to further specification in the form of more differences, and that difference gets its rights, the right of being different. Jacob Böhme described this transition in the stage represented by the Son as follows: The first and Only-begotten was Lucifer, the light-bearer, clearness, brightness, but he imaged himself in himself, i.e., posited an independent existence for himself, advanced to a condition of Being, and so to a state of revolt, and that then the eternal and Only-begotten was immediately put in his place.

Regarded from the first of the two standpoints, the relation is that God exists in His eternal truth, and this is thought of as the state of things which existed before time was, as the state in which God was when the blessed spirits and the morning stars, the angels, His children, sang His praises. The relation thus existing is described as a state, but it is an eternal relation of thought to its object. Later on a revolt occurred, as it is expressed, and this is the positing of the second standpoint, the one side of the truth represented by the analysis of the Son, the keeping apart of the two


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 moments which are contained in Him. The other side, again, is represented by subjective consciousness, the finite spirit, and this as pure thought is regarded as implicitly the Process which found its starting-point in the Immediate, and raised itself to the condition of truth. This is the second form.

We thus enter the sphere of determination, enter space and the world of finite Spirit. This may be more definitely expressed as a positing or bringing into view of the determinations or specific qualities, as a difference which is momentarily maintained; it is an act of going out on the part of God into finitude, an act of manifestation in finitude, for finitude taken in its proper meaning, implies simply the separation of what is implicitly identical, but which maintains itself in the act of separation. Regarded from the other side, that of subjective Spirit, this is posited as pure thought, though it is implicitly a result, and this has to be posited as it is potentially in its character as the movement of thought, or, to put it otherwise, pure thought has to go into itself, and it is in this way that it first posits itself as finite.

Regarding the matter from this standpoint, this Other is not represented by the Son, but by the external world, the finite world, which is outside of truth, the world of finitude, in which the Other has the form of Being, and is yet in its nature merely the ἕτερον, the definite, the differentiated, the limited, the negative.

The relation of these two spheres to the first may thus be defined by saying that it is the same Idea potentially which is present, though with this different specific form. The absolute act involved in that first judgment or act of differentiation is implicitly the same as the second here referred to; it is only in ordinary thought that the two are regarded as separate, as two absolutely distinct spheres and acts.

And, as a matter of fact, they have to be distinguished and kept separate; and when it is said that they are implicitly


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 the same, we must carefully define the sense in which this is to be understood, else we may get a false meaning and an incorrect conception, implying that the eternal Son of the Father, the Godhead who exists objectively for Himself, is the same as the world, and that we are to understand by the former nothing more than what we mean by the latter.

It has been already remarked, and is, indeed, self-evident, that it is only the Idea of God as previously unfolded in what was called the first sphere which is the true and eternal God, while His higher realisation and manifestation in the detailed process of Spirit is what is treated of in the third sphere.

When the world in its immediate form is taken as something which has an essential existence of its own, and when the sensuous and the temporal are regarded as having Being, then either the false meaning before referred to is attached to what is thus predicated of them, or else we are, at the very outset, forced to think of there being two eternal acts on the part of God. God’s active working, however, is emphatically one and the same, and does not show itself in manifold forms of varying activity, such as is expressed by the terms now, after, separate, &c.

Thus this differentiation when it takes the form of independence is merely the negative moment of Other-Being in an independent form or for itself, or of Being external to itself, which as such has no truth, but is merely a stage, and regarded from the point of time is merely a moment, and not even a moment, but something which possesses this kind of independence only as contrasted with finite Spirit, inasmuch as it itself as actually existing represents this kind and mode of independence. In God Himself this Now, this independent existence or Being-for-self, is the vanishing moment of manifestation.

This moment certainly now has the extension, breadth,


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 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


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 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.