G. W. F. Hegel

“ When we are in presence of this species of proof we at once feel that it belongs to a different sphere from that of the scientific proof. The empirical life of the individual, composed as it is of the most varied changes of mood and of conditions of feeling consequent on its entrance into different external states, takes occasion both from these states and when it is in them to multiply the result it has arrived at that there is a God, and seeks more and more anew to make this belief its own, and to make it a living belief for itself as being an individual existence subject to change. ”

“ If in the case of a mathematical proposition one single example is held to be sufficient, it is principally in connection with historical subjects and juridical cases that a multiplicity of proofs must be held to strengthen the force of the proof itself. In the region of experience or phenomena, the object, as being an empirical and individual thing, has the quality of contingency, and thus the particularity of the knowledge we have of it gives the object the same mere appearance of Being. ”

“ This very thorough separability and separateness of the activities, tendencies, aims, and actions of Spirit, which we meet with in empirical reality, may in some degree serve as an excuse for conceiving of the Idea of Spirit as something which breaks up into faculties, capacities, activities, and the like; for it is as an individual form of existence, a definite single being, that it is this particular finite existence which is thus found in a separate form of existence external to itself. ”

“ In dealing with God since we presuppose the existence of an absolutely general idea of Him, it is found, on the one hand, that He infinitely transcends that region in which all objects whatsoever stand in a connected relation with one another; and that, on the other hand, since God exists only for the inner element of Man’s nature in general, we directly meet in this sphere with the contingency of thought, conception, and imagination, in the most varied forms and with what is expressly allowed to be contingency, namely, that of sensations, emotions, and such like. ”

“ The Orientals speak of God as the many-named, or rather as the infinite-all-named, and imagine that the demand to declare what He is can be exhausted only by the inexhaustible statement of His names, that is, of His characteristics or specific qualities. We have already said of the infinite number of starting-points that they are comprised by means of thought in simple categories, and so here the necessity is still greater for reducing the multiplicity of attributes to a smaller number, or rather to one notion, all the more that God is one notion which has in it several inseparable notions ”

“ But besides this finite beginning, finite so far as the content is concerned, there is yet another starting-point, namely, the Notion of God, which so far as its content is concerned is infinite and something that ought to be, and the only finite element in which is that it can be something subjective, an element of which it has to be divested. We may without prejudice admit a variety of starting-points. This does not in itself in any way conflict with the demand which we considered ourselves justified in making that the true proof should be one only ”

“ The most abstract unity, however, is unity itself, and from this it would result that the Idea of God means simply that God is unity—and to express this in terms implying a subject, or at least something which has Being—that He is the One in fact, a description, however, which implies that He is One only as against many, so that the One in Himself might still also be a predicate of the many, and therefore be unity in Himself, the One Substance rather, or, if you like, Being. ”

“ The individual’s trust and the intensity of his belief in God are strengthened by the repetition of the essential elevation of his spirit to God, and by the experience and knowledge he gains of God’s wisdom and providence as shown in countless objects, events, and occurrences. ”

“ The finite, which has been called in a general way the starting-point, has various characteristics, and these consequently are the source of the different metaphysical proofs of the existence of God, that is to say, the proofs belonging to the sphere of thought only. In accordance with the historical form of the proofs, as we have to deal with them, the categories of the finite in which the starting-points get their definite character are, first, the contingency of earthly things, and next, the teleological relation which they have in themselves and to one another. ”

“ There is an external empirical multiplicity or difference, which presents itself, first of all, as something which has had an historical origin, and which has nothing to do with the differences which follow from the development of the Notion, and which we take, accordingly, in the form in which we directly come upon it. ”

“ Thought only brings the manifold content into a simple shape. It epitomises it without depriving it of its value or of anything that is essential to it. Its peculiar work rather is to bring this essential element into prominence. But here, too, we get various different determinations. First of all, the thought-determination is seen to be related to the starting-point from which Spirit rises from the finite up to God. Even if it reduces the innumerable characteristics to a few categories, these categories are still several in number. ”

“ The next shape taken by the reduction of the several characteristics of God resulting from the several proofs, to the one notion or conception which is to be conceived of as being one in itself, is the ordinary one, according to which they are to be carried back to a higher unity, as it is called, i.e., a more abstract unity, and, since the unity of God is the highest of all, to what is consequently the most abstract form of unity. ”

“ In the preceding lecture the speculative fundamental characteristics connected with the nature of the Notion, and its development into the manifoldness of specific qualities and definite forms, have been indicated. If we look once more at the special problem we are dealing with, we find that there, too, we are at once met by a multiplicity. We find that there are several proofs of the existence of God. ”

“ We thus get an infinite number of starting-points from which it is possible to advance to God, and from which we must necessarily advance, and hence the infinite number of such essential transitions which must have the force of proofs. ”

“ We may, however, have a feeling of distrust in reference to that multiplicity if we happen to reflect that here we have not to do with a finite object, and remember that our study of an infinite object must be philosophical, and that we are not to deal with it and expend labour upon it in a haphazard and external fashion. ”

“ An historical fact, nay even a mathematical figure, contains a number of references within it, and relations to what is outside of it, in accordance with which a conception is formed of it, and from which we reason syllogistically to the principal relation upon which they themselves depend, or to another specific quality which is of importance here and which is closely connected with them. ”

“ So, too, the verification and confirmation of conviction by means of the repetition of the experiences gained of the way to truth, must appear to be necessary in order to counteract the infinite possibility of deception and error which, on the other hand, lurks in the way to truth. ”

“ If, accordingly, the starting-points seem to permit us to take the fact of their being distinct from one another as implying a relation of equality or indifference between them, this indifference is of a limited character in view of the results which a multiplicity of characteristics of the conception of God yields ”