Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/121

 alters and entirely destroys its first meaning above referred to, and makes out of the necessity a mere utility which, as being contingent, is capable of being perverted.

Here we are concerned, on the contrary, with the inner necessity, which exists in and for itself; a necessity to which, indeed, there is no doubt that caprice—evil—is able to oppose itself; but in this case this caprice belongs to a sphere outside, attaching itself to the Ego, which, as free, is able to take its stand on the summit of its own independent individuality.

Such caprice is no longer connected with the necessity of which we speak; it is no longer the perversion of the very notion of necessity, as is the case so long as necessity is understood merely as utility.

I.—The Necessity of the Religious Standpoint.

The general necessity of the Notion accordingly develops itself in this wise. Religion is (1) conceived of as result, but (2) as a result which at the same time annuls itself as result, and that (3) it is the content itself which passes over in itself and through itself to posit itself as result. That is objective necessity, and not a mere subjective process. It is not we who set the necessity in movement; on the contrary, it is the act of the content itself, or, the object may be said to produce itself. Subjective deduction and intellectual movement occur, for example, in geometry; the triangle does not itself go through the process that we follow out in the intellectual act of demonstration.

Religion, however, as something essentially spiritual, is by its very existence itself this process and this transition. In the case of natural things, as, for example, the sun, we are in presence of an immediate existence at rest, and in the mental picture or idea we form of it there is no consciousness of an act of passing over, or transition. The religious consciousness, on the other hand,