Note 223 — Chapter V · SOME METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS OF ETHICS AND RELIGION

When it is said that the Absolute, if it exists, must be morally indifferent, there is often a conscious or unconscious confusion of thought. The Absolute must certainly be “indifferent” in the sense that it does not feel the internal discord of hatred and animosity against any of its constituents. Deus, as Spinoza says, neminem potest odio habere. For the Absolute is not one of the two combatants; it is at once both combatants and the field of combat. But to infer that the Absolute, because devoid of the feelings of hatred and private partisanship, must be indifferent in the sense that our goodness and badness make no difference to our place in it, is a fallacy of equivocation for which unconsciousness and bona fides are scarcely sufficient excuse.