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 HEGEL'S TREATMENT OF THE SUBJECTIVE NOTION. 169 effect. But in Reciprocity the cause is the effect of its own effect, and the necessary determination is complete. To say that it is in this necessity that we first reach freedom can only appear a paradox till it is examined. We must remember that for Hegel freedom never means the power to act without motives, or with an umnotived choice of motives. For him freedom always means absence of external restraint. That is free which is what its own nature prompts it to be, however little choice it may have had about the matter. If we say, then, that a thing is deficient in freedom, we must mean that, while its inner nature, if unthwarted, would lead it to be A B C, it is compelled by external influences to be A B D instead. Now this appeared possible in the cate- gories of Essence. For there we conceived everything as having an inner nature, which was connected indeed with its external relations, but was not identical with them, which could be either in or out of harmony with them, and, in the latter case, would be constrained. But by the time we have reached Eeciprocity we see that this is a mistake. The thing has no nature at all, except as it is determined by, and in turn determines, other things. These external determina- tions are its inner nature. And thus it reaches freedom. If it has no inner nature but its external determinations, it is clear that its external determinations can never make it do anything against its inner nature. This is indeed only a negative freedom. But any more positive freedom requires higher categories than we have yet reached. In necessity we have gained all the freedom which is possible until the idea of End has been developed. This point is so important that, to prevent ambiguity, it may be well to anticipate some considerations which belong more properly to the Objective Notion and to the Idea. Directly we introduce the ideas of End, of Life, or of Self- consciousness, we begin to distinguish between a free and a constrained state, even while we recognise that both states were equally determined from outside. We talk of a healthy tree as developing freely, in opposition to one which is struck by lightning or withered by drought. And yet it is as com- pletely determined by external circumstances in the one case as it is in the other. A man feels himself free if he can do what he wants, and feels himself constrained if he cannot. And yet his desire and its gratification are as completely determined in the one case as his desire and its disappoint- ment are in the other. This, however, does not contradict our previous result.