Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/279

 guided by rule and law, still it goes on till it reaches what is their end, or rather, it does nothing but lead up to their end; and so, too, their existence is interfered with in all kinds of ways by other things, and is brought to an end by external causes. If they are regarded as conditioned, then we can see that their conditions are things which exist independently outside of them, and which may correspond to them or not, and by which they are temporarily supported, or, it may be, are not. To begin with, they are seen to be co-ordinated in space without being ranged together in accordance with any other relation naturally belonging to them. The most heterogeneous elements are found side by side, and they can be separated without any kind of derangement being caused in the existence either of the one thing or the other. In the same way they succeed one another outwardly in time. They are, in fact, finite; and however independent they may seem, they are essentially devoid of independence, owing to the limits attaching to their finitude. They are; they are in a real sense, but their reality has the value of something which is merely a possibility; they are, and can therefore equally well either be or not be.

Their existence reveals the presence not only of connections between conditions, that is, the points of dependence owing to which they come to be characterised as contingent, but also the connections of cause and effect, the regular rules which govern the course they follow both inwardly and outwardly—laws, in fact. These elements of dependence, this conformity to law, raises them above the category of contingency into the region of necessity, and thus necessity is found within that sphere which we thought of as occupied by what was contingent. Contingency claims things in virtue of their isolation, and therefore they may either exist or not exist; but then, as governed by law, they are the opposite of what is contingent, they are not isolated, but are qualified, limited, related, in fact, to one another. They do