Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/160

 End. Necessity, in short, is without content, or, to put it otherwise, the difference contained in it is not yet posited; it is the process which we have seen, simple Becoming, which only is to contain differences, and therefore what is contained in it, though it is certainly difference, is difference which is not as yet posited. It is something which coincides with itself though only through mediation, and in this way difference in general is posited. It is, to begin with, only abstract self-determination; the determinateness or specialisation is merely something which is to be. In order that the determinateness be real, it is necessary that the specialisation and the difference should, in the act of coinciding with self, be posited as being able to hold out against the transition which goes on in the process, as maintaining themselves in the necessity. To posit is to give determinateness, and this determinateness, accordingly, is what coincides with itself; it is the content which maintains itself. This act of coinciding, thus characterised as content which maintains itself, is End.

In this specialisation or determinateness which takes place in the process of coinciding or coming together, there are two forms of determinateness to be noticed. The determinateness appears as content which maintains itself going through the process without undergoing alteration, and in the act of transition remaining equal to itself. Accordingly, so far as the determinateness is that of Form, it appears here in the shape of subject and object. The content is, to begin with, subjectivity, and the process means that it realises itself in the form of objectivity. This realised end is end, the content remains what it was; it is subjective, but at the same time objective as well.

(c.) We have thus arrived at the idea of conformity to an end; it is in the end that the definite existence of the notion in general begins, the Free existing as free Being which is at home with itself, what maintains itself,