16 MATHESIS. 



for it must return to whence it came. It has arisen out 

 of nothing, is itself the existing nothing ; it must there- 

 fore retrograde again into the nothing. 



GOD. 



61. The self-manifestation of the primary act is self- 

 consciousness. The eternal self-consciousness is God. 



62. The continued act of self-consciousness, or be- 

 coming self-conscious repeated, is called presentation. 

 God is therefore comprehended in ceaseless presenta- 

 tion. Presentations are single acts of self-consciousness. 

 Single acts, however, are real things. All real things, 

 however, are the world. The world therefore originates 

 with the presentations of the Eternal. 



63. The presentations are, however, manifested or 

 attain only reality through expression. The world is 

 therefore the language of God ; the creation of the world 

 the speaking of God. " God spake, and it was." It is not 

 merely said, God thought and it was. Thought belongs 

 merely to spirit ; in so far, however, as it becomes appa- 

 rent, it is a word, and the sum of all apparent thoughts 

 is speech. This is the created, realized system of thought. 

 The thought is only the ideajrf the world, but speech is 

 the idea actualized. 



64. As thought differs from speaking, so does God from 

 the world. Our world consists in our apparent thoughts, 

 namely, the words. The universe is the language of God. 

 So far as the thoughts lie at the foundation of the words, 

 it can be said, that our world were the play of our 

 thoughts, and the actual world that of God's. The word 

 has become world. Worldly things have no more reality 

 for God, than our words or our language for us. We 

 carry a world within us while we think ; we posit or 

 create a world without us while we speak. Thus God 

 carries the world within himself while he thinks ; he 

 posits the same without himself or creates it, while he 

 speaks. In so far as thought necessarily precedes speech, 

 it, may be said, that there would have been no world, 

 if God had not thought. In the same sense it may be 



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