But as difference is a positive condition of the reason, I cannot deduce it without presupposing it; I cannot explain it except by itself, because it is an original, self-luminous, self-attesting reality. Through what means arises the world, that which is distinguished from God? through the distinguishing of God from himself in himself. God thinks himself, he is an object to himself; he distinguishes himself from himself. Hence this distinction, the world, arises only from a distinction of another kind, the external distinction from an internal one, the static distinction from a dynamic one,--from an act of distinction: thus I establish difference only through itself, i.e., it is an original concept, a ne plus ultra of my thought, a law, a necessity, a truth. The last distinction that I can think is the distinction of a being from and in itself. The distinction of one being from another is self-evident, is already implied in their existence, is a palpable truth: they are two. But I first establish difference for thought when I discern it in one and the same being, when I unite it with the law of identity. Herein lies the ultimate truth of difference. The cosmogonic principle in God, reduced to its last elements, is nothing else than the act of thought in its simplest forms made objective. If I remove difference from God, he gives me no material for thought; he ceases to be an object of thought; for difference is an essential principle of thought. And if I consequently place difference in God, what else do I establish, what else do I make an object, than the truth and necessity of this principle of thought? CHAPTER IX. THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM, OR OF NATURE IN GOD. Interesting material for the criticism of cosmogonic and theogonic fancies is furnished in the doctrine--revived by Schelling and drawn from Jacob Böhme--of eternal Nature in God. God is pure spirit, clear self-consciousness, moral personality; Nature, on the contrary, is, at least partially, confused, dark, desolate, immoral, or to say no more, unmoral. But it is self-contradictory that the impure should proceed from the pure, darkness from light. How then can we remove these obvious difficulties in the way of assigning a divine origin to Nature? Only by positing this impurity, this darkness in God, by distinguishing in God himself a principle of light and a principle of darkness. In other words, we can only explain the origin of darkness by renouncing the idea of origin, and presupposing darkness as existing from the beginning. [62]