G. W. F. Hegel

“ These concrete aspects regarded in themselves even take on the form of a complete self-existing whole. But when posited in one notion, in one subject, they are not independent and separate from one another in it, but rather exist ideally, and the unity of the subject accordingly becomes all the more intensive. The greatest intensity of the subject in the ideality of all concrete determinations, of the most complete antitheses, is Spirit. By way of giving a clearer conception of this, we shall refer to the relation of Nature and Spirit. ”

“ If the attributes of God are supposed to express rather His relations to the world, the mode of His action in and towards an Other different from Himself, then the idea of God involves this much at least, that God’s absolute independence does not permit Him to come out of Himself, and shows us what happens to be the condition of the world, which is supposed to be outside of Him and to be contrasted with Him, and which we have no right to suppose is already separate from Him. ”

“ The elevation of the spirit to God is found in one thing, in the determination of His notion, of His attributes, and of His Being; or God as notion or idea is the absolutely Indeterminate, and it is only when there is a transition, namely, to Being—and this is the transition in its very first and most abstract form—that the notion and the idea enter on the stage of determinateness. ”

“ These are the distinctions which meet us when we begin to examine the proofs of the existence of God. It is the work of the Understanding to analyse what is concrete, to distinguish and to define the elements belonging to it, then to hold firmly to them and abide by them. ”

“ But because that possible notion is, in this very matter of identity, of bare possibility, reduced to this the most abstract of categories, and becomes no richer by means of existence, the product thus reached does not answer to the fulness of the idea of God, and we have accordingly a third division of the subject, in which we treat still further of the attributes of God and of His relations to the world. ”

“ Some examples might make it plainer for ordinary thought, and not to go too far—and Spirit, certainly, is always what is nearest—it is sufficient to think of the life-force which is the unity, the simple unit of the soul, and which is at the same time so concrete in itself that it appears only in the form of the process of its viscera, of its members and organs, which are essentially different from it and from each other, and which, yet, when separated from it, perish, and cease to be what they are, namely, life, that is, they no longer have the meaning and signification which belong to them. ”

“ Nature is contained in Spirit, is created by it, and spite of its apparently immediate Being, of its apparently independent reality, it is in itself something merely posited or dependent, something created, something having an ideal existence in Spirit. ”

“ God is, to begin with, a figurative idea, a name. So far as the two determinations contained in the proposition, namely, God and Being, are concerned, the most important thing is to determine or define the subject for itself, all the more that here the predicate of the proposition which would otherwise be indicated by the peculiar determination of the subject, namely, what this subject is, contains merely dry Being. ”

“ In connection with this mention of Nature regarded in reference to the several characteristics which we have to treat of in the course of our investigation, we may mention, by way of preface, that it does indeed appear in this shape as the totality of external existence, but at the same time as one of those characteristics above which we are to raise ourselves. ”

“ It results from this that the differences which we have met with are so formal that they cannot be taken as the basis of any substantial element, or of any particular spheres of existence which, if regarded apart from each other, could be considered as representing something true. ”

“ In connection with the belief that God is, this analysis comes into direct contact with a point which has already been incidentally touched upon, and is to be dealt with more thoroughly here, namely, the question as to the distinction to be drawn between what God is and the fact that He is. God is ”