eternal thinking, without beginning and without end."[44] This _living,
eternal process of absolute existence is the God of Hegel_.

It will thus be seen that the _Absolute_ is, with Hegel, the sum of all
actual and possible existence; "nothing is true and real except so far
as it forms an element of the Absolute Spirit."[45] "What kind of an
Absolute Being," he asks, "is that which does not contain in itself all
that is actual, even evil included?"[46] The Absolute, therefore, in
Hegel's conception, does not allow of any existence out of itself. It is
the _unity_ of the finite and the infinite, the eternal and the
temporal, the ideal and the real, the subject and the object. And it is
not only the unity of these opposites so as to exclude all difference,
but it contains in itself, all the differences and opposites as elements
of its being; otherwise the distinctions would stand over against
absolute as a limit, and the absolute would cease to be absolute.

God is, therefore, according to Hegel, "no motionless, eternally
self-identical and unchangeable being, but a living, eternal _process_
of absolute self-existence. This process consists in the eternal
self-distinction, or antithesis, and equally self-reconciliation or
synthesis of those opposites which enter, as necessary elements, into
the constitution of the Divine Being. This _self-evolution_, whereby the
absolute enters into antithesis, and returns to itself again, is the
eternal _self-actualization_ of its being, and which at once constitutes
the beginning, middle, and end, as in the circle, where the beginning is
at the same time the end, and the end the beginning."[47]

[Footnote 44: Morell, "Hist, of Philos., p. 461."]

[Footnote 45: "Philos. of Religion," p. 204.]

[Footnote 46: Ibid., chap. xi. p. 24.]

[Footnote 47: Herzog's _Real-Encyc._, art. "Hegelian Philos.," by
Ulrici.]

The whole philosophy of Hegel consists in the development of this idea
of God by means of his, so-called, dialectic method, which reflects the
objective life-process of the Absolute, and is, in fact, identical with
it; for God, says he, "is only the Absolute Intelligence in so far as he
knows himself to be the Absolute Intelligence, _and this he knows only
in science_ [dialectics], _and this knowledge alone constitutes his true
existence._"[48] This life-process of the Absolute has three "moments."
It may be considered as the idea _in itself_--bare, naked, undetermined,
unco