can say is that this absolute Subject is something which begins merely—that is first or primary.
The third determination of God in relation to the world.—This is expressed by what we call the attributes of God. These represent His determinate character, i.e., inasmuch as we have seen that there is a particularisation of God, God’s self-determination, and that this self-determination is the creation of the world, it follows that along with this there is posited the fact of a relation on the part of God to the world, or to put it otherwise, the attributes are the determinate element itself, only known in the Notion of God.
The One is something which has got determinate character, which is known as being, as not returning into God, the Other is God’s being made determinate as a determinate quality of God. It is this that we are in the habit of calling by the name of attributes, God’s relations to the world, and to say that we know only this relation of God to the world and do not know God Himself, is to use an unfortunate expression. It is just this which is His own determinate character, and it is this consequently which is represented by His own attributes.
It is only when things are represented in an external way and from the point of view of the senses, that anything can be said to be, and to be for self, in such a way that its relations to other things, its attributes, are distinguished from its existence, for it is just these which constitute its own peculiar nature. The manner in which a man stands related to others is just his nature. The acid is nothing else than the particular character of its relation to the base—that is the nature of the acid itself. If we understand the relation in which an object stands to other things, we understand the nature of the object itself. These distinctions, therefore, are of a very inferior character, since they directly coincide as being the product of an understanding which does not know them, and is not aware what it possesses in these distinctions. This
