Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/255

 Abstract necessity, as this abstraction of thought and of the return into self, is the one extreme; the other extreme is the singularity or individual existence of the particular divine powers.

(c.) Posited necessity or the particular gods, their appearance and outward form.

The divine particular powers belong to what is implicitly universal, to necessity, but they come out from it because it is not yet posited for itself as the Notion and determined as freedom. Rationality and the rational content are still in the form of immediacy, or, in other words, subjectivity is not posited as infinite subjectivity, and the individuality hence appears as external. The Notion is not yet revealed, and its definite existence as it here presents itself does not yet contain the content of necessity. But it is at the same time made plain that the freedom of the particular is merely the semblance of freedom, and that the particular powers are held within the unity and power of necessity.

Necessity is not in itself anything divine, or at least is not the divine in a general sense. We may indeed say that God is necessity, i.e., it is one of His essential qualities, though it may be one which is still imperfect, but we cannot say that necessity is God. For necessity is not the Idea, but rather abstract Notion. But Nemesis, and still more these particular powers, are already divine in as far as the former has a relation to definitely existing reality, while these powers again are in themselves characterised as distinguished from necessity, and consequently as distinguished from one another, and are contained in necessity as the unity of the wholly universal and particular.

Accordingly, because particularity is not yet tempered by the Idea, and necessity is not the fully concrete measure of wisdom, unlimited contingency of content makes its appearance in the sphere of the particular gods.