reason, which, on the contrary, in its character as the free, and especially as the religious human spirit, abandons such a finite relation as this of mediation with an Other, and knows how to solve in thought the contradiction which comes to consciousness in thought.
Dialectic development, such as has been here given, does not, however, belong to the systems of simple substantiality, to pantheistic systems. They do not get beyond Being or Substance, a form which we shall take up later on. This category, taken in itself, is the basis of all religions and philosophies. In all these God is Absolute Being, an Essence, which exists absolutely in-and-for-itself, and does not exist through an Other, but represents independence pure and simple.
(b.) Categories like these, which are of so abstract a character, do not apply very widely, and are very unsatisfactory. Aristotle (“Metaphysics,” i. 5) says of Xenophanes, that “he was the first to unify (ἑνίσας), he did not advance anything of a definite nature, and so gazing into the whole Heavens—into space (ins Blaue), as we say—said, the One is God.” The Eleatics, who followed him, showed more definitely that the many and the characteristics which rest on multiplicity lead to contradiction and resolve themselves into nothing; and Spinoza, in particular, showed that all that is finite disappears in the unity of Substance, and thus there is no longer left any further, concrete, fruitful determination for this Substance itself. Development has to do only with the form of the starting-points which finds itself in presence of subjective reflection, and with that of its dialectic, by means of which it brings back into that universality the particular and finite, which appear in an independent way. It is true that in Parmenides this One is defined as thought, or that which thinks, what has Being; and so, too, in Spinoza, Substance is defined as the unity of Being (of extension) and thought. Only, one cannot therefore say that this Being or Substance is
