GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING.
Religion is the disuniting of man from himself; he sets God before him
as the antithesis of himself. God is not what man is--man is not what
God is. God is the infinite, man the finite being; God is perfect,
man imperfect; God eternal, man temporal; God almighty, man weak;
God holy, man sinful. God and man are extremes: God is the absolutely
positive, the sum of all realities; man the absolutely negative,
comprehending all negations.
But in religion man contemplates his own latent nature. Hence it must
be shown that this antithesis, this differencing of God and man, with
which religion begins, is a differencing of man with his own nature.
The inherent necessity of this proof is at once apparent from
this,--that if the divine nature, which is the object of religion,
were really different from the nature of man, a division, a disunion
could not take place. If God is really a different being from myself,
why should his perfection trouble me? Disunion exists only between
beings who are at variance, but who ought to be one, who can be one,
and who consequently in nature, in truth, are one. On this general
ground, then, the nature with which man feels himself in disunion
must be inborn, immanent in himself, but at the same time it must be
of a different character from that nature or power which gives him
the feeling, the consciousness of reconciliation, of union with God,
or, what is the same thing, with himself.
This nature is nothing else than the intelligence--the reason
or the understanding. God as the antithesis of man, as a being
not human, i.e., not personally human, is the objective nature
of the understanding. The pure, perfect divine nature is the
self-consciousness of the understanding, the consciousness which
the understanding has of its own perfection. The understanding
knows nothing of the sufferings of the heart; it has no desires,
no passions, no wants, and, for that reason, no deficiencies and
weaknesses, as the heart has. Men in whom the intellect predominates,
who, with one-sided but all the more characteristic definiteness,
embody and personify for us the nature of the understanding, are free
from the anguish of the heart, from the passions, the excesses of
the man who has strong emotions; they are not passionately interested
in any finite, i.e., particular object; they do not give themselves
in pledge; they are free. "To want nothing, and by this freedom from
wants to become like the immortal gods;"--"not to subject ourselves
to things, but things to us;"--"all is vanity;"--these and similar
sayings are the mottoes of the men who are governed by abstract
understanding. The understanding is that part of our nature which
is neutral, impassible, not to bribed, not subject to illusions--the
pure, passionless light of the intelligence. It is the categorical,
impartial consciousness of the fact as fact, because it is itself of
an objective nature. It is the consciousness of the uncontradictory,
because it is itself the uncontradictory unity, the source of
logical identity. It is the consciousness of law, necessity, rule,
measure, because it is itself the activity of law, the necessity
of the nature of things under the form of spontaneous activity, the
rule of rules, the absolute measure, the measure of measures. Only
by the understanding can man judge and act in contradiction with
his dearest human, that is, personal feelings, when the God of the
understanding,--law, necessity, right,--commands it. The father who,
as a judge, condemns his own son to death because he knows him to be
guilty, can do this only as a rational, not as an emotional being. The
understanding shows us the faults and weaknesses even of our beloved
ones; it shows us even our own. It is for this reason that it so
often throws us into painful collision with ourselves, with our
own hearts. We do not like to give reason the upper hand: we are
too tender to ourselves to carry out the true, but hard, relentless
verdict of the understanding. The understanding is the power which has
relation to species: the heart represents particular circumstances,
individuals,--the understanding, general circumstances, universals;
it is the superhuman, i.e., the impersonal power in man. Only by and
in the understanding has man the power of abstraction from himself,
from his subjective being,--of exalting himself to general ideas
and relations, of distinguishing the object from the impressions
which it produces on his feelings, of regarding it in and by itself
without reference to human personality. Philosophy, mathematics,
astronomy, physics, in short, science in general, is the practical
proof, because it is the product of this truly infinite and divine
activity. Religious anthropomorphisms, therefore, are in contradiction
with the understanding; it repudiates their application to God; it
denies them. But this God, free from anthropomorphisms, impartial,
passionless, is nothing else than the nature of the understanding
itself regarded as objective.
God as God, that is, as a being not finite, not human, not materially
conditioned, not phenomenal, is only an object of thought. He is
the incorporeal, formless, incomprehensible--the abstract, negative
being: he is known, i.e., becomes an object, only by abstraction
and negation (viâ negationis). Why? Because he is nothing but the
objective nature of the thinking power, or in general of the power or
activity, name it what you will, whereby man is conscious of reason,
of mind, of intelligence. There is no other spirit, that is (for the
idea of spirit is simply the idea of thought, of intelligence, of
understanding, every other spirit being a spectre of the imagination),
no other intelligence which man can believe in or conceive than that
intelligence which enlightens him, which is active in him. He can
do nothing more than separate the intelligence from the limitations
of his own individuality. The "infinite spirit," in distinction
from the finite, is therefore nothing else than the intelligence
disengaged from the limits of individuality and corporeality,--for
individuality and corporeality are inseparable,--intelligence posited
in and by itself. God, said the schoolmen, the Christian fathers,
and long before them the heathen philosophers,--God is immaterial
essence, intelligence, spirit, pure understanding. Of God as God no
image can be made; but canst thou frame an image of mind? Has mind a
form? Is not its activity the most inexplicable, the most incapable
of representation? God is incomprehensible; but knowest thou the
nature of the intelligence? Hast thou searched out the mysterious
operation of thought, the hidden nature of self-consciousness? Is not
self-consciousness the enigma of enigmas? Did not the old mystics,
schoolmen, and fathers, long ago compare the incomprehensibility of the
divine nature with that of the human intelligence, and thus, in truth,
identify the nature of God with the nature of man? [20] God as God--as
a purely thinkable being, an object of the intellect--is thus nothing
else than the reason in its utmost intensification become objective
to itself. It is asked what is the understanding or the reason? The
answer is found in the idea of God. Everything must express itself,
reveal itself, make itself objective, affirm itself. God is the
reason expressing, affirming itself as the highest existence. To the
imagination, the reason is the revelation of God; but to the reason,
God is the revelation of the reason; since what reason is, what it can
do, is first made objective in God. God is a need of the intelligence,
a necessary thought--the highest degree of the thinking power. "The
reason cannot rest in sensuous things;" it can find contentment
only when it penetrates to the highest, first necessary being,
which can be an object to the reason alone. Why? Because with the
conception of this being it first completes itself, because only
in the idea of the highest nature is the highest nature of reason
existent, the highest step of the thinking power attained: and it is
a general truth, that we feel a blank, a void, a want in ourselves,
and are consequently unhappy and unsatisfied, so long as we have not
come to the last degree of a power, to that quo nihil majus cogitari
potest,--so long as we cannot bring our inborn capacity for this or
that art, this or that science, to the utmost proficiency. For only in
the highest proficiency is art truly art; only in its highest degree
is thought truly thought, reason. Only when thy thought is God dost
thou truly think, rigorously speaking; for only God is the realised,
consummate, exhausted thinking power. Thus in conceiving God, man first
conceives reason as it truly is, though by means of the imagination
he conceives this divine nature as distinct from reason, because
as a being affected by external things he is accustomed always to
distinguish the object from the conception of it. And here he applies
the same process to the conception of the reason, thus for an existence
in reason, in thought, substituting an existence in space and time,
from which he had, nevertheless, previously abstracted it. God, as
a metaphysical being, is the intelligence satisfied in itself, or
rather, conversely, the intelligence, satisfied in itself, thinking
itself as the absolute being, is God as a metaphysical being. Hence
all metaphysical predicates of God are real predicates only when
they are recognised as belonging to thought, to intelligence, to
the understanding.
The understanding is that which conditionates and co-ordinates all
things, that which places all things in reciprocal dependence and
connection, because it is itself immediate and unconditioned; it
inquires for the cause of all things, because it has its own ground
and end in itself. Only that which itself is nothing deduced, nothing
derived, can deduce and construct, can regard all besides itself as
derived; just as only that which exists for its own sake can view
and treat other things as means and instruments. The understanding
is thus the original, primitive being. The understanding derives all
things from God as the first cause; it finds the world, without an
intelligent cause, given over to senseless, aimless chance; that is,
it finds only in itself, in its own nature, the efficient and the final
cause of the world--the existence of the world is only then clear and
comprehensible when it sees the explanation of that existence in the
source of all clear and intelligible ideas, i.e., in itself. The being
that works with design towards certain ends, i.e., with understanding,
is alone the being that to the understanding has immediate certitude,
self-evidence. Hence that which of itself has no designs, no purpose,
must have the cause of its existence in the design of another, and
that an intelligent being. And thus the understanding posits its own
nature as the causal, first, premundane existence--i.e., being in rank
the first but in time the last, it makes itself the first in time also.
The understanding is to itself the criterion of all reality. That which
is opposed to the understanding, that which is self-contradictory,
is nothing; that which contradicts reason contradicts God. For
example, it is a contradiction of reason to connect with the idea
of the highest reality the limitations of definite time and place;
and hence reason denies these of God as contradicting his nature. The
reason can only believe in a God who is accordant with its own nature,
in a God who is not beneath its own dignity, who, on the contrary,
is a realisation of its own nature: i.e., the reason believes only
in itself, in the absolute reality of its own nature. The reason
is not dependent on God, but God on the reason. Even in the age
of miracles and faith in authority, the understanding constitutes
itself, at least formally, the criterion of divinity. God is all
and can do all, it was said, by virtue of his omnipotence; but
nevertheless he is nothing and he can do nothing which contradicts
himself, i.e., reason. Even omnipotence cannot do what is contrary
to reason. Thus above the divine omnipotence stands the higher power
of reason; above the nature of God the nature of the understanding,
as the criterion of that which is to be affirmed and denied of God,
the criterion of the positive and negative. Canst thou believe in
a God who is an unreasonable and wicked being? No, indeed; but why
not? Because it is in contradiction with thy understanding to accept a
wicked and unreasonable being as divine. What then dost thou affirm,
what is an object to thee, in God? Thy own understanding. God is thy
highest idea, the supreme effort of thy understanding, thy highest
power of thought. God is the sum of all realities, i.e., the sum of
all affirmations of the understanding. That which I recognise in the
understanding as essential I place in God as existent: God is what
the understanding thinks as the highest. But in what I perceive to
be essential is revealed the nature of my understanding, is shown
the power of my thinking faculty.
Thus the understanding is the ens realissimum, the most real being
of the old onto-theology. "Fundamentally," says onto-theology, "we
cannot conceive God otherwise than by attributing to him without
limit all the real qualities which we find in ourselves." [21]
Our positive, essential qualities, our realities, are therefore
the realities of God, but in us they exist with, in God without,
limits. But what then withdraws the limits from the realities,
what does away with the limits? The understanding. What, according
to this, is the nature conceived without limits, but the nature of
the understanding releasing, abstracting itself from all limits? As
thou thinkest God, such is thy thought;--the measure of thy God is
the measure of thy understanding. If thou conceivest God as limited,
thy understanding is limited; if thou conceivest God as unlimited,
thy understanding is unlimited; If, for example, thou conceivest God
as a corporeal being, corporeality is the boundary, the limit of thy
understanding; thou canst conceive nothing without a body. If, on the
contrary, thou deniest corporeality of God, this is a corroboration
and proof of the freedom of thy understanding from the limitation of
corporeality. In the unlimited divine nature thou representest only
thy unlimited understanding. And when thou declarest this unlimited
being the ultimate essence, the highest being, thou sayest in reality
nothing else than this: the être suprême, the highest being, is the
understanding.
The understanding is further the self-subsistent and independent
being. That which has no understanding is not self-subsistent, is
dependent. A man without understanding is a man without will. He who
has no understanding allows himself to be deceived, imposed upon,
used as an instrument by others. How shall he whose understanding
is the tool of another have an independent will? Only he who thinks
is free and independent. It is only by the understanding that man
reduces the things around and beneath him to mere means of his own
existence. In general, that only is self-subsistent and independent
which is an end to itself, an object to itself. That which is an end
and object to itself is for that very reason--in so far as it is an
object to itself--no longer a means and object for another being. To
be without understanding is, in one word, to exist for another,--to
be an object: to have understanding is to exist for oneself,--to
be a subject. But that which no longer exists for another, but for
itself, rejects all dependence on another being. It is true we, as
physical beings, depend on the beings external to us, even as to the
modifications of thought; but in so far as we think, in the activity of
the understanding as such, we are dependent on no other being. Activity
of thought is spontaneous activity. "When I think, I am conscious that
my ego in me thinks, and not some other thing. I conclude, therefore,
that this thinking in me does not inhere in another thing outside of
me, but in myself, consequently that I am a substance, i.e., that I
exist by myself, without being a predicate of another being." [22]
Although we always need the air, yet as natural philosophers we
convert the air from an object of our physical need into an object
of the self-sufficing activity of thought, i.e., into a mere thing
for us. In breathing I am the object of the air, the air the subject;
but when I make the air an object of thought, of investigation, when
I analyse it, I reverse this relation,--I make myself the subject,
the air an object. But that which is the object of another being is
dependent. Thus the plant is dependent on air and light, that is,
it is an object for air, and light, not for itself. It is true that
air and light are reciprocally an object for the plant. Physical
life in general is nothing else than this perpetual interchange
of the objective and subjective relation. We consume the air and
are consumed by it; we enjoy and are enjoyed. The understanding
alone enjoys all things without being itself enjoyed; it is the
self-enjoying, self-sufficing existence--the absolute subject--the
subject which cannot be reduced to the object of another being,
because it makes all things objects, predicates of itself,--which
comprehends all things in itself, because it is itself not a thing,
because it is free from all things.
That is dependent the possibility of whose existence lies out
of itself; that is independent which has the possibility of its
existence in itself. Life therefore involves the contradiction of
an existence at once dependent and independent,--the contradiction
that its possibility lies both in itself and out of itself. The
understanding alone is free from this and other contradictions of
life; it is the essence perfectly self-subsistent, perfectly at one
with itself, perfectly self-existent. [23] Thinking is existence in
self; life, as differenced from thought, existence out of self: life
is to give from oneself; thought is to take into oneself. Existence
out of self is the world; existence in self is God. To think is to
be God. The act of thought, as such, is the freedom of the immortal
gods from all external limitations and necessities of life.
The unity of the understanding is the unity of God. To the
understanding the consciousness of its unity and universality
is essential; the understanding is itself nothing else than the
consciousness of itself as absolute identity, i.e., that which is
accordant with the understanding is to it an absolute, universally
valid, law; it is impossible to the understanding to think that what
is self-contradictory, false, irrational, can anywhere be true, and,
conversely, that what is true, rational, can anywhere be false and
irrational. "There may be intelligent beings who are not like me,
and yet I am certain that there are no intelligent beings who know
laws and truths different from those which I recognise; for every
mind necessarily sees that two and two make four, and that one must
prefer one's friend to one's dog." [24] Of an essentially different
understanding from that which affirms itself in man, I have not the
remotest conception, the faintest adumbration. On the contrary,
every understanding which I posit as different from my own, is
only a position of my own understanding, i.e., an idea of my own, a
conception which falls within my power of thought, and thus expresses
my understanding. What I think, that I myself do, of course only in
purely intellectual matters; what I think of as united, I unite; what
I think of as distinct, I distinguish; what I think of as abolished,
as negatived, that I myself abolish and negative. For example, if
I conceive an understanding in which the intuition or reality of
the object is immediately united with the thought of it, I actually
unite it; my understanding or my imagination is itself the power of
uniting these distinct or opposite ideas. How would it be possible
for me to conceive them united--whether this conception be clear or
confused--if I did not unite them in myself? But whatever may be the
conditions of the understanding which a given human individual may
suppose as distinguished from his own, this other understanding is only
the understanding which exists in man in general--the understanding
conceived apart from the limits of this particular individual. Unity is
involved in the idea of the understanding. The impossibility for the
understanding to think two supreme beings, two infinite substances,
two Gods, is the impossibility for the understanding to contradict
itself, to deny its own nature, to think of itself as divided.
The understanding is the infinite being. Infinitude is immediately
involved in unity, and finiteness in plurality. Finiteness--in the
metaphysical sense--rests on the distinction of the existence from
the essence, of the individual from the species; infinitude, on the
unity of existence and essence. Hence, that is finite which can be
compared with other beings of the same species; that is infinite
which has nothing like itself, which consequently does not stand as
an individual under a species, but is species and individual in one,
essence and existence in one. But such is the understanding; it has
its essence in itself, consequently it has nothing, together with or
external to itself, which can be ranged beside it; it is incapable of
being compared, because it is itself the source of all combinations
and comparisons; immeasurable, because it is the measure of all
measures,--we measure all things by the understanding alone; it can
be circumscribed by no higher generalisation, it can be ranged under
no species, because it is itself the principle of all generalising, of
all classification, because it circumscribes all things and beings. The
definitions which the speculative philosophers and theologians give
of God, as the being in whom existence and essence are not separable,
who himself is all the attributes which he has, so that predicate
and subject are with him identical,--all these definitions are thus
ideas drawn solely from the nature of the understanding.
Lastly, the understanding or the reason is the necessary being. Reason
exists because only the existence of the reason is reason; because,
if there were no reason, no consciousness, all would be nothing;
existence would be equivalent to non-existence. Consciousness first
founds the distinction between existence and non-existence. In
consciousness is first revealed the value of existence, the value
of nature. Why, in general, does something exist? why does the world
exist? on the simple ground that if something did not exist, nothing
would exist; if reason did not exist, there would be only unreason;
thus the world exists because it is an absurdity that the world should
not exist. In the absurdity of its non-existence is found the true
reason of its existence, in the groundlessness of the supposition
that it were not the reason that it is. Nothing, non-existence,
is aimless, nonsensical, irrational. Existence alone has an aim,
a foundation, rationality; existence is, because only existence is
reason and truth; existence is the absolute necessity. What is the
cause of conscious existence, of life? The need of life. But to whom
is it a need? To that which does not live. It is not a being who saw
that made the eye: to one who saw already, to what purpose would be
the eye? No! only the being who saw not needed the eye. We are all
come into the world without the operation of knowledge and will; but
we are come that knowledge and will may exist. Whence, then, came the
world? Out of necessity; not out of a necessity which lies in another
being distinct from itself--that is a pure contradiction,--but out of
its own inherent necessity; out of the necessity of necessity; because
without the world there would be no necessity; without necessity, no
reason, no understanding. The nothing, out of which the world came,
is nothing without the world. It is true that thus, negativity,
as the speculative philosophers express themselves--nothing is the
cause of the world;--but a nothing which abolishes itself, i.e., a
nothing which could not have existed if there had been no world. It
is true that the world springs out of a want, out of privation, but
it is false speculation to make this privation an ontological being:
this want is simply the want which lies in the supposed non-existence
of the world. Thus the world is only necessary out of itself and
through itself. But the necessity of the world is the necessity of
reason. The reason, as the sum of all realities,--for what are all the
glories of the world without light, much more external light without
internal light?--the reason is the most indispensable being--the
profoundest and most essential necessity. In the reason first lies
the self-consciousness of existence, self-conscious existence; in the
reason is first revealed the end, the meaning of existence. Reason is
existence objective to itself as its own end; the ultimate tendency
of things. That which is an object to itself is the highest, the
final being; that which has power over itself is almighty.