Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/159

 which falls upon him, and something different from what he has done results from it; punishment follows on his action, but it is something different from, other than, what he willed himself. If, however, a man comes to recognise punishment as just, then it is the consequence and the law of his own act of will which is bound up with his act itself. It is the rationality of his act which comes to him under the semblance of an “other;” he has not to submit to any kind of force; he bears his own deed, feels himself to be free in it, it is his own which comes to him, justice, the rational element in what he has done. It is only, however, implicitly that necessity contains freedom, and this is an essential circumstance. It is only formal freedom, subjective freedom, and this means that necessity has not as yet any content in itself.

Just because necessity is the simple act of coming together with itself, is it freedom. We require in connection with it movement, circumstances, &c. This belongs to mediation, but when we say, This is necessary, then this is a unity; whatever is necessary, is; this is the simple expression, the result, in which the process has come together or coincided with itself. It expresses simple relation to itself, the act of finding itself; necessity is what is freest; it is not determined or limited by anything; all mediations are once more taken up into it and done away with. Necessity is the mediation which freely yields itself up; it is implicitly freedom. The feeling which finds expression in submitting to necessity, as it existed among the Greeks, and as it still exists amongst the Mohammedans, certainly contains freedom in it, but it is only potential or formal freedom: in presence of the necessity here, no content, no purpose, nothing definite has any value, and it is in this that its defect lies.

Necessity, according to the higher conception and notion of it, real necessity, is thus just freedom as such, it is the Notion as such; or, more definitely characterised, it is the