standing is the power which has relation to species: the heart represents particular circumstances, individuals,—the understanding, general circumstances, universals; it is the superhuman, i.e., the impersonal power in man. Only by and in the understanding has man the power of abstraction from himself, from his subjective being,—of exalting himself to general ideas and relations, of distinguishing the object from the impressions which it produces on his feelings, of regarding it in and by itself without reference to human personality. Philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, physics, in short, science in general, is the practical proof, because it is the product, of this truly infinite and divine activity. Religious anthropomorphisms, therefore, are in contradiction with the understanding; it repudiates their application to God; it denies them. But this God, free from anthropomorphisms, impartial, passionless, is nothing else than the nature of the understanding itself regarded as objective.
God as God, that is, as a being not finite, not human, not materially conditioned, not phenomenal, is only an object of thought. He is the incorporeal, formless, incomprehensible—the abstract, negative being: he is known, i.e., becomes an object, only by abstraction and negation (via negationis). Why? Because he is nothing but the objective nature of the thinking power, or in general, of the power or activity, name it what you will, whereby man is conscious of reason, of mind, of intelligence. There is no other spirit, that is, (for the idea of spirit is simply the idea of thought, of intelligence, of understanding, every other spirit being a spectre of the imagination,) no other intelligence which man can believe in or conceive, than that intelligence which enlightens him, which is active in him. He can do nothing more than separate the intelligence from the limitations of his own individuality. The “infinite spirit,” in distinction from the finite, is therefore nothing else than the intelligence disengaged from the limits of individuality and corporeality,—for individuality and corporeality are inseparable,—intelligence posited in and by itself. God, said the schoolmen, the Christian fathers, and long before them the heathen philosophers,—God is immaterial essence, intelligence, spirit, pure understanding. Of God as God, no image can be made; but canst thou frame an image of mind? Has mind a form? Is not its activity the most inexplicable, the most incapable of representation? God is incomprehensible;
