Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/288

, the nature of determinate Being or existence belonging to it is, as has been already remarked, so far evident that it is seen at the same time to have the character of something which is virtually a nullity, and consequently the transition to its Other, to the Necessary, is already expressed in that existence itself. It is an instance of the same thing as we have in abstract identity, which is a simple reference to self; it is known as a possibility, and being a possibility it is recognised that it is not yet anything. The fact that something is possible does not really imply anything. Identity is characterised as sterility, and that is what it really is.

What is wanting in this characteristic finds its complement, as we have seen, in the characteristic which is its antithesis. Necessity is not abstract, but truly absolute, solely in virtue of the fact that it contains the connection with an Other in itself, that it is self-differentiation, but a differentiation which has disappeared in something higher and is ideal. It consequently contains what belongs to necessity in general, but it is distinguished from this latter as being external and finite, and as involving a connection having reference to something else which remains Being and has the value of Being, and so is merely dependence. It goes by the name of necessity too, inasmuch as mediation is in general essential to necessity. The connection of its Other with something else, which is what constitutes it, does not get support from the ends for which it exists. Absolute necessity, on the other hand, transforms any such relation to an Other into a relation to itself, and consequently produces what is really inner harmony with itself.

Spirit rises above contingency and external necessity, just because these thoughts are in themselves insufficient and unsatisfying. It finds satisfaction in the thought of absolute necessity, because this latter represents something at peace with itself. Its result as result, however, is—it is so, it is simply necessary. Thus all aspiration,