I.

THE Doctrine of Knowledge, apart from all special and definite knowing, proceeds immediately upon Knowledge itself, in the essential unity in which it recognises Knowledge as existing; and it raises this question in the first place - How this Knowledge can come into being, and what it is in its inward and essential Nature?

The following must be apparent: - There is but One who is absolutely by and through himself, - namely, God; and God is not the mere dead conception to which we have thus given utterance, but he is in himself pure Life. He can neither change nor determine himself in aught within himself, nor become any other Being; for his Being contains within it all his Being and all possible Being, and neither within him nor out of him can any new Being arise.

If, therefore, Knowledge must be, and yet be not God himself, then, since there is nothing but God, it can only be God out of himself, - God's Being out of his Being, - his Manifestation, in which he dwells wholly as he is in himself, while within himself he also still remains wholly such as he is. But such a Manifestation is a picture or Schema.

If there be such a Schema - and this can only become evident through its immediate being, seeing that it is immediate - it can only be because God is; and, so surely as God is, it cannot but be. It is, however, by no means to be conceived of as a work of God, effected by some particular act, whereby a change is wrought in himself; but it is to be conceived of as an immediate consequence of his Being. It is absolutely, according to the Form of his Being, just as he himself is absolutely; although it is not he himself, but his Schema.

Again: - Out of God there can be nothing whatever but this; - no Being that is essentially independent, for that he alone is; - only his Schema can there be out of him, and thus a Being out of God signifies merely his Schema; - the two expressions mean precisely the same thing.