Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/327

 their personalities are merely personifications; and yet, although they may not exactly deserve to be called persons, they also partly contain the higher characteristic of subjective inherent freedom. In this way they occupy a position above that of their mistress, namely, necessity, to which only the limited element in this deeper principle is subordinate, a principle which has elsewhere to await its purification from this finitude in the region of which it at first appears, and has to manifest itself independently in its infinite freedom.

The logical working out of the category of absolute necessity is to be looked for in systems which start from abstract thoughts. This application in detail of the category has reference to the relation between this principle and the manifoldness of the natural and spiritual world. If absolute necessity thus forms the basis as representing what is alone true and truly real, in what relation do material things stand to it? These things are not only natural things, but also include Spirit, the spiritual individuality with all its conceptions, interests, and aims. This relation has, however, been already defined in connection with the principle referred to. They are contingent things. Further, they are distinct from absolute necessity itself; but they have no independent Being as against it, and neither has it, consequently, as against them. There is only one Being, and this belongs to necessity, and things by their very nature form part of it. What we have defined as absolute necessity has to be more definitely hypostatised in the form of universal Being or Substance, while, in its character as a result, it is a self-mediated unity in virtue of the abrogation of mediation. It is thus simple Being, and is what alone represents the subsisting element of things. When our attention was previously called to necessity in the form of Greek Fate, it was thought of as characterless or indeterminate force; but Being itself has already come down from the abstraction referred to, to the level of the things