[p. 457]
|457| the positive reality, and therefore an opposite, doubled relation is necessary to it itself. Because the real subsists in it, its identity is a relative one, and this relative identity of the opposed is necessity. As it is thus in difference, so its relation itself or the identity of the relation must also be a different; both that in it unity and that multiplicity is the first. This twofold relation determines the doubled side of necessity or of the appearance of the absolute. Since this twofold relation falls on multiplicity, and if we call indifference the unity of the differents, which stands on the other side and in which that reality or the many is sublated, then the absolute is the unity of indifference and of relation; and because the latter is a doubled one, the appearance of the absolute is determined as unity of indifference and of that relation or of that relative identity in which the many is the first, the positive, – and as unity of indifference and of that relation in which unity is the first and positive; the former is physical, the latter ethical nature. And since indifference or unity is freedom, but relation or relative identity is necessity, each of these two appearances is the oneness and indifference of freedom and necessity. Substance is absolute and infinite; in this predicate infinity the necessity of the divine nature or its appearance [is contained], and this necessity expresses itself as reality precisely in a doubled relation. Each of the two attributes itself expresses substance and is absolute and infinite or the unity of indifference and of relation, and in the relation their difference is posited in such a way that in the relation of the one the many, in the relation of the other the one is the first or that which is turned outward against the other. But because in ethical nature itself in its relation unity is the first,

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