And it is the loftiest morality that teaches that evil has no existence and that man is not bound to permit the substantial existence of this distinction, this negation.  Yet it is possible for him to desire to maintain the difference and even to push it to the point of sheer opposition to God, who is the universal, self-contained and self-sufficing.  In this case man is evil.  But, alternatively, he may annul this distinction and place his true existence in God alone and in his aspiration towards Him; and in this case he is good.

In Spinozism there is indeed the difference between good and evil, opposition between God and man; but side by side with it we have also the principle that evil is to be deemed a non-entity.  In God as God, in God as substance, there is no distinction.  It is for man that the distinction exists, as also for him exists the distinction of good and evil.

V.—­THE DETERMINATION OF UNITY

The superficial method of appraising philosophy is exemplified also in those who assert that it is a “system of identity.”  It is perfectly true that substance is this unity at one with itself, but spirit no less is this self-identity.  Ultimately, all is identity, unity with itself.  But when they speak of the philosophy of identity they have in view abstract identity or unity in general; and they neglect the essential point, to wit, the determination of this unity in itself; in other words, they omit to consider whether this unity is determined as substance or as spirit.  Philosophy from beginning to end is nothing else than the study of determinations of unity.

In the sphere of the Notion many unities are comprised.  The combination of water and earth is a unity, but this unity is mixture.  If we bring together a base and an acid, we have as the result a crystal; also water; but water which cannot be discerned and which gives no trace of humidity.  Here the unity of the water and of this matter is a unity different from the mixture of water and earth.  The essential point is the difference of these determinations.  The unity of God is always unity, but what is of primary importance is to know the modes and forms of the determination of this unity.

Manifestation, development, determination do not go on to infinity, nor yet do they stop accidentally.  But in the course of its true development the Notion completes its course by a return upon itself, whereby it has attained the reality adequate to it.  So it is that the manifestation is infinite in nature, that the content is adequate to the Notion of spirit, and that the phenomenal world exists, like spirit, in and for itself.  In religion, the Notion of religion has become its own object.  Spirit which is in and for itself has now no longer in its development individual forms and determinations, it knows itself no longer as spirit in such determinability or such a limited moment; but it has triumphed over these limitations and this finiteness, and is for itself that which also it is in itself.  This cognisance in which spirit is for itself what it is in itself constitutes the in-and-for of spirit which is in possession of knowledge, the perfect and absolute religion, in which is revealed what spirit is, what God is.  That is the Christian religion.