Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/161

 or, to put it more definitely, the Subject. The Subject determines itself within itself; this determination, regarded from one point of view, is content, and the Subject is free in it, is at home with itself, is free from the content, it is its own content, and the content has value only in so far as the Subject permits. This is the Notion taken generally.

The Subject, however, also gives realisation to the Notion. The particularity thus acquired is at first simple, it is held within the Notion in the form of Being which is at home with itself, and which has returned back into itself. This subjectivity, although it is totality, is still at the same time one-sided—subjective merely, only one moment of the entire form. The characteristic here is that the content is posited only in the form of the equality of what coincides with itself. This form thus defined as that which coincides with itself is the simple form of identity with self, and the Subject is the totality of Being as thus at home with itself. But so far as the Subject is concerned, that specialisation whereby it has an end is opposed to totality, and the Subject accordingly seeks to do away with this form and to realise the end. The realised end, however, remains attached to the Subject; the latter possesses its own self in it, has objectified itself, set itself free from its singleness or simplicity, while at the same time maintaining itself in its manifoldness. This is the conception or notion of conformity to an end.

The world has now to be regarded as being in conformity to an end. We had previously the characterisation that things are contingent, but the higher characterisation is the teleological view of the world, the thought of its conformity to an end. It is possible to accept the first of these characterisations and yet to be in doubt as to whether we ought to consider things as being in conformity to an end, whether some of them are to be regarded as ends to which other things are