Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/155

 nothing results from the presupposed condition, which is different from these, but rather the process is of such a kind that whatever is presupposed appears also in the result, coincides with itself, finds itself; or, to put it otherwise, the two moments of immediate existence, and of its being posited, are posited as one moment. In external necessity contingency is substantial or immediate existence. What is, is not as being something posited, the conditions do not belong to the unity, they are immediate, and the result is only something posited, is not Being. The effect is what is posited, the cause is what is underived. In the true necessity these are a unity; the circumstances exist, but they not only are, they are also posited by means of the unity, are, as a matter of fact, contingent, but are this in themselves; in that they cancel themselves the negation of their Being is the unity of necessity, so that their Being is one which is implicitly negated. The result is, accordingly, not only result, or only something posited, but it is just because of what thus takes place that the result comes to have Being. Necessity is thus the positing of the conditions, they are themselves posited by means of the unity; the result is also something posited, and is this indeed by means of reflection, by means of the process, by means of the reflection of the unity into itself; this unity is therefore the Being of the result. Thus whatever takes place within necessity simply comes into harmony with itself. The unity projects itself outward, disperses itself in circumstances which appear as if they were contingent; the unity of itself projects its conditions as if they were innocent of any connection with it—as if they were, so to speak, ordinary stones which appear in an immediate way, and rouse no suspicion of their being anything else. In the second stage they are posited, they do not belong to themselves, but to an “Other,” to their result. They are thus broken up in themselves, and the manifestation of their nature as