Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/303

 have definite quality and to exist in definite time; while the unity is in its own nature devoid of content, roots itself within itself, and receives that serenity or joyousness which at once raises it above its determinateness and renders it indifferent towards it, only from the spiritual form and from ideality. Necessity is freedom potentially only, is not yet wisdom, and is devoid of an end. In it we find freedom only in so far as we yield up the content of freedom. Anything that is necessary, doubtless, represents something having a content, some occurrence or other, condition and consequence, &c.; but its content as such is something contingent. It may take this particular form, or it may take some other form; or, to put it otherwise, necessity is just a formal mode of existence, and its content consists merely in the fact that it is, but suggests nothing of what it is. It consists only in holding fast to this abstract form of existence.

Necessity, however, buries itself in the Notion. The Notion, or freedom, is the truth of necessity. To grasp anything in thought means that we conceive of it as a moment of a connected whole, which in its character as a connected whole has the element of difference in it, and has thus a definite and substantial nature. The connection between things which is expressed by cause and effect is itself as yet a connection of necessity, i.e., it is as yet formal. What is wanting in it is that a content be posited as determined for itself, traversant ce changement de cause en effect sans change, a content which passes through the change of cause and effect without alteration. In this case, in fact, the external relation and reality as embodied in different forms are degraded to the condition of means. In order to the carrying out of an end it is necessary to have means, i.e., something external with the power of producing effects, the essential mark of which consists in its being subordinate to the movement of the end, which preserves itself in its movement, and does away with its transitional character. In cause