Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/164

 members; it is an articulated organism, an organism with differentiated members. Since the subject produces itself within itself, it has as its aim to have its means within itself. Each is a part or member and maintains itself, and is the means whereby the others are produced and maintained; it is consumed and consumes; it is this form, and not the material particles, which remains and maintains itself in this process. Life is thus an end in itself.

But it now further appears that the end, which is end for itself, stands at the same time in relation to external conformity to an end. Organic life has relations to inorganic Nature, and finds in it the means through which it maintains itself, and these means exist independently so far as this organic life is concerned. Thus inner conformity to an end has also relations to a conformity which is outside. Life can assimilate the means, but they have already been found for it, they have not come into existence through Life itself. Its own organs can produce the life but not the means.

We are here in the region of finite conformity to an end; absolute conformity we shall get to later on.

The teleological way of looking at the world thus contains the different forms of the end in general. There are fixed ends and means, and even the end which has the end in itself is merely finite, dependent, standing in need of help in respect to the means. This conformity to an end is so far finite, and finitude in these relations to externality is, to begin with, the means, the material; the end cannot continue to exist apart from these means, nor, on the other hand, can it exist unless these means are powerless in reference to the end.

3. The next element of truth in this relation of means and end is to be found in that universal Power or Force through which the means potentially exist for the end. From the standpoint of conformity to an end, things which are ends have the power of realising themselves, but they