something real. This ground of his existence which God has in himself, is not God considered absolutely, i.e., in so far as he exists; it is only the ground of his existence. It is Nature—in God; an existence inseparable from him, it is true, but still distinct. Analogically (?), this relation may be illustrated by gravitation and light in nature.” But this ground is the non-intelligent in God. “That which is the commencement of an intelligence (in itself) cannot also be intelligent.” “In the strict sense, intelligence is born of this unintelligent principle. Without this antecedent darkness there is no reality of the Creator.” “With abstract ideas of God as actus purissimus, such as were laid down by the older philosophy, or such as the modern, out of anxiety to remove God far from Nature, is always reproducing, we can effect nothing. God is something more real than a mere moral order of the world, and has quite another and a more living motive power in himself than is ascribed to him by the jejune subtilty of abstract idealists. Idealism, if it has not a living realism as its basis, is as empty and abstract a system as that of Leibnitz or Spinoza, or as any other dogmatic system.” “So long as the God of modern theism remains the simple, supposed purely essential but in fact nonessential Being that all modern systems make him, so long as a real duality is not recognised in God, and a limiting, negativing force, opposed to the expansive affirming force, so long will the denial of a personal God be scientific honesty.” “All consciousness is concentration, is a gathering together, a collecting of oneself. This negativing force by which a being turns back upon itself, is the true force of personality, the force of egoism.” “How should there be a fear of God, if there were no strength in him? But that there should be something in God, which is mere force and strength, cannot be held astonishing if only it be not maintained that he is this alone and nothing besides.”[1]
But what then is force and strength which is merely such, if not corporeal force and strength? Dost thou know any power which stands at thy command, in distinction from the power of kindness and reason, besides muscular power? If thou canst effect nothing through kindness and the arguments of reason, force is what thou must take refuge in. But
- ↑ Schelling, Ueber das Wesen der Menschlichen Freiheit, 429, 432, 427. Denkmal Jacobi’s, s. 82, 97-99.
