THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE IN GOD.
The second Person, as God revealing, manifesting, declaring himself
(Deus se dicit), is the world-creating principle in God. But this
means nothing else than that the second Person is intermediate between
the noumenal nature of God and the phenomenal nature of the world,
that he is the divine principle of the finite, of that which is
distinguished from God. The second Person as begotten, as not à se,
not existing of himself, has the fundamental condition of the finite
in himself. [60] But at the same time, he is not yet a real finite
Being, posited out of God; on the contrary, he is still identical
with God,--as identical as the son is with the father, the son being
indeed another person, but still of like nature with the father. The
second Person, therefore, does not represent to us the pure idea of
the Godhead, but neither does he represent the pure idea of humanity,
or of reality in general: he is an intermediate Being between the
two opposites. The opposition of the noumenal or invisible divine
nature and the phenomenal or visible nature of the world, is, however,
nothing else than the opposition between the nature of abstraction
and the nature of perception; but that which connects abstraction
with perception is the imagination: consequently, the transition from
God to the world by means of the second Person, is only the form in
which religion makes objective the transition from abstraction to
perception by means of the imagination. It is the imagination alone by
which man neutralises the opposition between God and the world. All
religious cosmogonies are products of the imagination. Every being,
intermediate between God and the world, let it be defined how it may,
is a being of the imagination. The psychological truth and necessity
which lies at the foundation of all these theogonies and cosmogonies
is the truth and necessity of the imagination as a middle term between
the abstract and concrete. And the task of philosophy in investigating
this subject is to comprehend the relation of the imagination to
the reason,--the genesis of the image by means of which an object of
thought becomes an object of sense, of feeling.
But the nature of the imagination is the complete, exhaustive truth
of the cosmogonic principle, only where the antithesis of God and the
world expresses nothing but the indefinite antithesis of the noumenal,
invisible, incomprehensible being, God, and the visible, tangible
existence of the world. If, on the other hand, the cosmogonic being
is conceived and expressed abstractly, as is the case in religious
speculation, we have also to recognise a more abstract psychological
truth as its foundation.
The world is not God; it is other than God, the opposite of God, or at
least that which is different from God. But that which is different
from God cannot have come immediately from God, but only from a
distinction of God in God. The second Person is God distinguishing
himself from himself in himself, setting himself opposite to himself,
hence being an object to himself. The self-distinguishing of God
from himself is the ground of that which is different from himself,
and thus self-consciousness is the origin of the world. God first
thinks the world in thinking himself: to think oneself is to beget
oneself, to think the world is to create the world. Begetting precedes
creating. The idea of the production of the world, of another being
who is not God, is attained through the idea of the production of
another being who is like God.
This cosmogonical process is nothing else than the mystic paraphrase of
a psychological process, nothing else than the unity of consciousness
and self-consciousness made objective. God thinks himself:--thus he
is self-conscious. God is self-consciousness posited as an object,
as a being; but inasmuch as he knows himself, thinks himself, he also
thinks another than himself; for to know oneself is to distinguish
oneself from another, whether this be a possible, merely conceptional,
or a real being. Thus the world--at least the possibility, the idea of
the world--is posited with consciousness, or rather conveyed in it. The
Son, i.e., God thought by himself, objective to himself, the original
reflection of God, the other God, is the principle of creation. The
truth which lies at the foundation of this is the nature of man: the
identity of his self-consciousness with his consciousness of another
who is identical with himself, and of another who is not identical
with himself. And the second, the other who is of like nature, is
necessarily the middle term between the first and third. The idea
of another in general, of one who is essentially different from me,
arises to me first through the idea of one who is essentially like me.
Consciousness of the world is the consciousness of my limitation:
if I knew nothing of a world, I should know nothing of limits; but
the consciousness of my limitation stands in contradiction with the
impulse of my egoism towards unlimitedness. Thus from egoism conceived
as absolute (God is the absolute Self) I cannot pass immediately to
its opposite; I must introduce, prelude, moderate this contradiction
by the consciousness of a being who is indeed another, and in so far
gives me the perception of my limitation, but in such a way as at
the same time to affirm my own nature, make my nature objective to
me. The consciousness of the world is a humiliating consciousness;
the creation was an "act of humility;" but the first stone against
which the pride of egoism stumbles is the thou, the alter ego. The
ego first steels its glance in the eye of a thou before it endures
the contemplation of a being which does not reflect its own image. My
fellow-man is the bond between me and the world. I am, and I feel
myself, dependent on the world, because I first feel myself dependent
on other men. If I did not need man, I should not need the world. I
reconcile myself with the world only through my fellow-man. Without
other men, the world would be for me not only dead and empty, but
meaningless. Only through his fellow does man become clear to himself
and self-conscious; but only when I am clear to myself does the
world become clear to me. A man existing absolutely alone would lose
himself without any sense of his individuality in the ocean of Nature;
he would neither comprehend himself as man nor Nature as Nature. The
first object of man is man. The sense of Nature, which opens to us
the consciousness of the world as a world, is a later product; for it
first arises through the distinction of man from himself. The natural
philosophers of Greece were preceded by the so-called seven Sages,
whose wisdom had immediate reference to human life only.
The ego, then, attains to consciousness of the world through
consciousness of the thou. Thus man is the God of man. That he
is, he has to thank Nature; that he is man, he has to thank man;
spiritually as well as physically he can achieve nothing without
his fellow-man. Four hands can do more than two, but also four eyes
can see more than two. And this combined power is distinguished not
only in quantity but also in quality from that which is solitary. In
isolation human power is limited, in combination it is infinite. The
knowledge of a single man is limited, but reason, science, is
unlimited, for it is a common act of mankind; and it is so, not only
because innumerable men co-operate in the construction of science,
but also in the more profound sense, that the scientific genius of
a particular age comprehends in itself the thinking powers of the
preceding age, though it modifies them in accordance with its own
special character. Wit, acumen, imagination, feeling as distinguished
from sensation, reason as a subjective faculty,--all these so-called
powers of the soul are powers of humanity, not of man as an individual;
they are products of culture, products of human society. Only where
man has contact and friction with his fellow-man are wit and sagacity
kindled; hence there is more wit in the town than in the country,
more in great towns than in small ones. Only where man suns and warms
himself in the proximity of man arise feeling and imagination. Love,
which requires mutuality, is the spring of poetry; and only where man
communicates with man, only in speech, a social act, awakes reason. To
ask a question and to answer are the first acts of thought. Thought
originally demands two. It is not until man has reached an advanced
stage of culture that he can double himself, so as to play the part of
another within himself. To think and to speak are therefore, with all
ancient and sensuous nations, identical; they think only in speaking;
their thought is only conversation. The common people, i.e., people
in whom the power of abstraction has not been developed, are still
incapable of understanding what is written if they do not read it
audibly, if they do not pronounce what they read. In this point of view
Hobbes correctly enough derives the understanding of man from his ears!
Reduced to abstract logical categories, the creative principle in
God expresses nothing further than the tautological proposition:
the different can only proceed from a principle of difference,
not from a simple being. However the Christian philosophers and
theologians insisted on the creation of the world out of nothing,
they were unable altogether to evade the old axiom--"Nothing comes
from nothing," because it expresses a law of thought. It is true that
they supposed no real matter as the principle of the diversity of
material things, but they made the divine understanding (and the Son
is the wisdom, the science, the understanding of the Father)--as that
which comprehends within itself all things as spiritual matter--the
principle of real matter. The distinction between the heathen eternity
of matter and the Christian creation in this respect is only that the
heathens ascribed to the world a real, objective eternity, whereas
the Christians gave it an invisible, immaterial eternity. Things were
before they existed positively,--not, indeed, as an object of sense,
but of the subjective understanding. The Christians, whose principle
is that of absolute subjectivity, conceive all things as effected only
through this principle. The matter posited by their subjective thought,
conceptional, subjective matter, is therefore to them the first
matter,--far more excellent than real, objective matter. Nevertheless,
this distinction is only a distinction in the mode of existence. The
world is eternal in God. Or did it spring up in him as a sudden idea,
a caprice? Certainly man can conceive this too; but, in doing so, he
deifies nothing but his own irrationality. If, on the contrary, I abide
by reason, I can only derive the world from its essence, its idea,
i.e., one mode of its existence from another mode; in other words,
I can derive the world only from itself. The world has its basis in
itself, as has everything in the world which has a claim to the name
of species. The differentia specifica, the peculiar character, that
by which a given being is what it is, is always in the ordinary sense
inexplicable, undeducible, is through itself, has its cause in itself.
The distinction between the world and God as the creator of the world
is therefore only a formal one. The nature of God--for the divine
understanding, that which comprehends within itself all things,
is the divine nature itself; hence God, inasmuch as he thinks and
knows himself, thinks and knows at the same time the world and all
things--the nature of God is nothing else than the abstract, thought
nature of the world; the nature of the world nothing else than the
real, concrete, perceptible nature of God. Hence creation is nothing
more than a formal act; for that which, before the creation, was an
object of thought, of the understanding, is by creation simply made an
object of sense, its ideal contents continuing the same; although it
remains absolutely inexplicable how a real material thing can spring
out of a pure thought. [61]
So it is with plurality and difference--if we reduce the world to
these abstract categories--in opposition to the unity and identity
of the Divine nature. Real difference can be derived only from a
being which has a principle of difference in itself. But I posit
difference in the original being, because I have originally found
difference as a positive reality. Wherever difference is in itself
nothing, there also no difference is conceived in the principle of
things. I posit difference as an essential category, as a truth,
where I derive it from the original being, and vice versâ: the
two propositions are identical. The rational expression is this:
Difference lies as necessarily in the reason as identity.
But as difference is a positive condition of the reason, I cannot
deduce it without presupposing it; I cannot explain it except by
itself, because it is an original, self-luminous, self-attesting
reality. Through what means arises the world, that which is
distinguished from God? through the distinguishing of God from
himself in himself. God thinks himself, he is an object to himself;
he distinguishes himself from himself. Hence this distinction, the
world, arises only from a distinction of another kind, the external
distinction from an internal one, the static distinction from a dynamic
one,--from an act of distinction: thus I establish difference only
through itself, i.e., it is an original concept, a ne plus ultra of
my thought, a law, a necessity, a truth. The last distinction that
I can think is the distinction of a being from and in itself. The
distinction of one being from another is self-evident, is already
implied in their existence, is a palpable truth: they are two. But I
first establish difference for thought when I discern it in one and
the same being, when I unite it with the law of identity. Herein lies
the ultimate truth of difference. The cosmogonic principle in God,
reduced to its last elements, is nothing else than the act of thought
in its simplest forms made objective. If I remove difference from
God, he gives me no material for thought; he ceases to be an object
of thought; for difference is an essential principle of thought. And
if I consequently place difference in God, what else do I establish,
what else do I make an object, than the truth and necessity of this
principle of thought?