Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/158

 thus necessity appears as if it were something whose existence is presupposed as dependent on or conditioned by contingent things. Absolute necessity is in this way put in a position of dependence, so that contingent things remain outside of it.

The true connection is as follows. Contingent things exist, but their Being has the value merely of possibility; they are and pass away; they are themselves simply preposited, or have hypothetical existence through the process of unity. Their first moment consists in their becoming posited with the semblance of immediate existence; their second moment consists in their being negated, in their being therefore conceived of essentially as appearance. In the Process they are essential moments, and so it may be said that they are the essential condition of absolute necessity. In the finite world it is true we start from some such immediate form of Being, but in the true world external necessity is simply the appearance referred to, and what is immediate is merely something posited, dependent on something else. It is this which constitutes the defect in mediations of this kind which pass for proofs of the existence of God. The really true content consists in this, that the Absolute must come to be recognised as absolute necessity.

3. Finally, absolute necessity actually is and contains in itself Freedom; for it consists just in this, that it comes together with, comes into harmony with itself; it is absolutely for itself, is not dependent on another; its action is free, is simply the act of meeting with or coinciding with itself, its process consists simply in its finding itself; but this is just freedom. Implicitly, necessity is free; it is only by an illusion that the distinction is made between it and what results from it. We see this in the case of punishment. Punishment comes upon a man as an evil, as force, as the exercise of power which is foreign to him, and in which he does not find himself. It appears as external necessity, as something external