must be held to as essential. When, for instance, we say that God, in accordance with His conception or notion, is potentially the immediate Power which differentiates itself and returns to itself, it is implied that He is this only as being negativity which is immediately related to itself, i.e., as absolute reflection into self, which is just the characteristic of Spirit. Should we, accordingly, wish to speak of God as presented in His first determination, in accordance with His Notion, and should we wish to go on from this to the other determinations, we are already speaking of the third; the last is the first. When, in order to avoid this, and if we begin in an abstract way, we speak of the first only in accordance with its own determination, or when the imperfection of the notion renders it necessary to do this, then the first is the Universal, and that activity, that begetting or creating, is already a principle distinct from the abstract-Universal, which thus appears and can appear as a second principle, as something which manifests itself, externalises itself (Logos, Sophia), just as the first exists as the abyss of Being. This is made clear by the nature of the Notion itself. It comes to the front in connection with every end and with every manifestation of life. Life maintains itself; to maintain or preserve means to pass into difference, into the struggle with particularity, means that something finds itself to be distinct from inorganic nature. Life is thus only a resultant inasmuch as it has brought itself into being, is a product which in turn produces; what is thus produced is itself living, i.e., it is its own presupposition, it passes through its process, and nothing new comes out of this; what is produced was already there from the beginning. The same holds true of love and reciprocal love. In so far as love exists, it is the beginning, and all action is merely its confirmation by which it is at once produced and nourished. But what is produced already exists, it is confirmation of the presence of love, since nothing comes out of it but what is already
