But these different spheres are different only as regards form; the matter of them is the same. Thought only brings the manifold content into a simple shape. It epitomises it without depriving it of its value or of anything that is essential to it. Its peculiar work rather is to bring this essential element into prominence. But here, too, we get various different determinations. First of all, the thought-determination is seen to be related to the starting-point from which Spirit rises from the finite up to God. Even if it reduces the innumerable characteristics to a few categories, these categories are still several in number. The finite, which has been called in a general way the starting-point, has various characteristics, and these consequently are the source of the different metaphysical proofs of the existence of God, that is to say, the proofs belonging to the sphere of thought only. In accordance with the historical form of the proofs, as we have to deal with them, the categories of the finite in which the starting-points get their definite character are, first, the contingency of earthly things, and next, the teleological relation which they have in themselves and to one another. But besides this finite beginning, finite so far as the content is concerned, there is yet another starting-point, namely, the Notion of God, which so far as its content is concerned is infinite and something that ought to be, and the only finite element in which is that it can be something subjective, an element of which it has to be divested. We may without prejudice admit a variety of starting-points. This does not in itself in any way conflict with the demand which we considered ourselves justified in making that the true proof should be one only; in so far as this proof is known by thought to represent the inner element of thought, thought can also show that it represents one and the same path, although starting from different points. Similarly the result is one and the same, namely, the Being of God. This, however, is a kind of indeter-
