Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/292

 But it is just here that we find that moment of sadness already referred to, and which diffuses itself over this act, whereby necessity is transfigured and becomes freedom. The freedom here is the result of mediation through the negation of things finite. As abstract Being, the satisfaction gained is empty reference to self, the inner unsubstantial solitude of self-consciousness.

This defect lies in the determinate character of the result as well as of the starting-point. It is the same in both of these, that is to say, it is just the indeterminateness of Being. The same defect which has been noted as present in the form taken by the process of necessity, as this process exists in the region of the volition of subjective Spirit, will be found, too, in the process when it is an objective content for the thinking consciousness. The defect, however, does not lie in the nature of the process itself; and we have now to consider that process in the theoretical form, which is the point we have specially to deal with.