vity of our
mind does this One, this absolutely universal Being, exist, we cannot
but name the one activity of mind which corresponds to it as
constituting its proper natural domain. This activity, which corresponds
to the universal, is thought.

Thought is the field in which this content moves; it is the energising
of the universal, or the universal in the reality of its activity. Or,
if we say that thought embraces the universal, that for which the
universal is will still be thought.

This universal which can be produced by thought, and which is for
thought, may be a quite abstract universal. In this sense it is the
unlimited, the infinite, the being without bounds, without particular
determination. This universal, negative to begin with, has its seat not
elsewhere than in thought.

To think of God is to rise above the things of sense, exterior and
individual, above simple feeling into the region of pure being; being at
unity with itself--that is to say, into the pure region of the
universal. And this region is thought.

Such is the substratum for this content considered on the subjective
side. Here the content is that Being in which is no difference, no
schism; Being which abides in itself, the universal; and thought is the
form for which this universal is.

Thus we have a difference between thought and the universal which we
have called God. It is a difference which in the first place belongs
only to our reflection, and is by no means to be found in the content on
its own account. There is the result to which philosophy comes--a result
already comprised in religion as under the form of faith--to wit, that
God is the sole veritable reality, the Being without which no other
reality would exist.

In the unity of this reality, in this cloudless shining, the reality and
the distinction which we call thinking-being have as yet no place.

What we have before us is this absolute unity. This content, this
determination we cannot yet call religion because to religion belongs
subjective spirit consciousness. Thought is the seat of this universal,
but this seat is, to begin with, absorbed in this being which is one,
eternal, in and for itself.

This universal constitutes the beginning and the point of departure, but
only as unity which so abides. It is not a mere substratum whence
differences are born; rather, all differences are included in this
universal. No more is it an abstract and inert universal, but the
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