self-relation. An effect implies a self-separation in the cause a transference of energy to its own created object. Reciprocity is the bridge by which thought makes this transition. The cause is seen to be as dependent upon its effect as the reverse. It first becomes a cause in its effect. Without this it would be causeless. Thus cause and effect have essential kinship, mutually begetting each other. They form one total, dividing itself off from itself and yet finding itself in both. Each is an alter ego begotten by the other, forming a totality of infinite connection with self, freely positing all differences and yet realizing only itself in them. It is always and everywhere the cause only of itself; that is, it is free self-activity. Self-separation is the essential presupposition or ground of causality. The infinite regress of cause and effect is futile. The totality of conditions must be self-sufficient, self-moving, self-separating, and self-relating, for outside of the totality there can be nothing causal. Hence changes in the totality of conditions are spontaneous or self-determined. Thus the categories of essence, which modern science uses, issue inductively in self-activity, self-relation, freedom, and personality — the ultimate and constitutive presupposition underlying all objects of sense and all forces, laws, and systems of science.
But as self-activity is not impersonal activity, neither can it be solitary activity. Self-consciousness is never an abstract, unitary activity. It is always constituted of trinal relations — subject, object, and subject-object. Causa sui begets eternally a second free self-activity as its own object. This again is creative in its self-recognition. Knowing is one with willing. In knowing himself, he creates a third equal one, in which the first also knows himself. The Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity is the ultimate speculative conception of the first principle, knowing, willing, loving. The perfect life of this true totality is a life of self-constituted relationships. It is timeless and spaceless. Knowing eternally creates its object of knowledge; willing, its product; and loving, its lover. In this trinity of relationship we may see love as the central constitutive ground, the absolute form of self-activity. The world and man are its manifestation
