Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/253

 those who occupy the standpoint referred to cling to no aim, no interest, as against actually existing circumstances. Misfortune, discontent, is nothing but the contradiction implied in the fact that something is contrary to my will. If the particular interest is given up, then by this act I have retreated into this pure rest, into this pure Being, into this “is.”

There is here no consolation for man, but then it is not necessary. He requires consolation when he desires compensation for some loss; but here he has renounced the inner root of worry and discontent, and has wholly given up what is lost, because he has the power which enables him to look into necessity. It is, accordingly, nothing but a false illusion to imagine that consciousness is annihilated when brought into relation to necessity—that it relates itself to something which is absolutely beyond its own world, and finds in it nothing having a relationship with itself. Necessity is not one person, and accordingly consciousness does not exist in it on its own account, for itself, or in other words, it is not an individual or selfish oneness in its immediacy. In relation to that which is one person it is independent, wishes to be independent, to be for itself, and to stand on its own basis. The servant or vassal, in performing his service, in his condition of subjection, has fear, and in doing any base act against his master he has a self-seeking design. But in relation to necessity the subject appears as something which does not exist independently, or as determined for itself, it has, on the contrary, surrendered itself, retains no end for itself, and the revering of necessity is just this indeterminate attitude of self-consciousness, this attitude which is wholly devoid of the element of opposition. What we now-a-days call fate is just the opposite of this attitude of self-consciousness. We speak of just, unjust, merited fate. We use the word fate by way of explanation, that is, as suggesting the reason of any condition in which individuals are, or of the fate of