this thing which is equal to itself in one, is thus immediate and equal to itself only when it is simply the negation of the negation, that is, it itself contains the negation, the finite, but as an appearance or semblance which annuls itself and is preserved in something higher. Or, since the immediacy which it comes to be by this act—that abstract equality with itself into which it passes over and which is Being—is only the moment of the Infinite conceived of in a one-sided way, and the affirmative as representing it appears only as this entire process, and is therefore finite, it follows that the Infinite, in determining itself in the form of Being, determines itself as finitude. But finitude and this immediate Being are consequently just the negation which negates itself. This apparent end, the passing of the living dialectic into the dead repose of the result, is itself only the beginning again of this living dialectic.
This is the Notion, the logical and rational element in the first abstract characteristic of God and religion. The side represented by the latter is expressed by that moment of the Notion which starts from immediate Being, and which is absorbed in and taken up into the Infinite. The objective side, however, as such is contained in the self-unfolding of the Infinite into Being and finitude, which, just because of this, is merely momentary and transitory—transitory merely, in virtue of the infinitude whose manifestation it merely is, and which represents the force in it. The so-called Cosmological Proof is of use solely in connection with the effort to bring into consciousness what the inner life, the pure rational element of the inner movement, really is, and which, regarded in its subjective aspect, is called religious elevation. If this movement, when it appears in that form of the Understanding in which we have seen it, is not conceived of and understood as it is in-and-for-itself, still the substantial element which forms its basis does not lose anything in consequence. It is this substantial element
