Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/165

 have not the power of positing the means. Both the end and the material appear as indifferent to each other, both appear as having an immediate definite existence, the means being something found for the end. Their potentiality, accordingly, is necessarily the power which posits the end, and brings the end, which has its end in itself, into a unity with the means; and in order that the finitude of the relation may be done away with—the finitude being what we have so far been dealing with—we must proceed to the point at which the Totality or whole of the process in its inner conformity to an end, comes into view. What is living has ends in itself; it has means and material within its own existence; it exists as the power or force of the means and its material. This we find present at first only in the living individual existence. It has in its organs the means, and is therefore its own material too. These means are pervaded and penetrated by the end, they do not exist independently for themselves, they cannot exist apart from the soul, apart from the living unity of the body to which they belong. This fact must now take on the form of what is universal, i.e., the means and materials which appear as accidental forms of existence as contrasted with what the end implicitly is, have actually to be brought under the sway of the Power in them, and to have their soul only in the end, spite of their apparently indifferent independent existence. The universal idea here is Power, which exerts its power in accordance with ends, universal Power. In so far as the end, which is an end in itself, exists, and inorganic Nature is outside of it, this latter as a matter of fact belongs to the Power which shows its power in accordance with ends, so that those forms of existence which appear immediately exist only for the end. There are, it may be said, things which are implicitly ends, and things which appear as means, but this characterisation cannot be maintained, for the first mentioned may in their turn be relatively means, while the