Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/213

 of knowing, would only be possible between equivalent conceptions, since the spheres of these alone cover each other mutually. Apart from these, it only gives rise to a vicious circle.

§ 49. Necessity.
The Principle of Sufficient Reason in all its forms is the sole principle and the sole support of all necessity. For necessity has no other true and distinct meaning than that of the infallibility of the consequence when the reason is posited. Accordingly every necessity is conditioned: absolute, i.e., unconditioned, necessity therefore is a contradicto in adjecto. For to be necessary can never mean anything but to result from a given reason. By defining it as "what cannot not be," on the other hand, we give a mere verbal definition, and screen ourselves behind an extremely abstract conception to avoid giving a definition of the thing. But it is not difficult to drive us from this refuge by inquiring how the non-existence of anything can be possible or even conceivable, since all existence is only given empirically. It then comes out, that it is only possible so far as some reason or other is posited or present, from which it follows. To be necessary and to follow from a given reason, are thus convertible conceptions, and may always, as such, be substituted one for the other. The conception of an "ABSOLUTELY necessary Being" which finds so much favour with pseudo-philosophers, contains therefore a contradiction : it annuls by the predicate "absolute" (i.e., "unconditioned by anything else") the only determination which makes the "necessary" conceivable. Here again we have an instance of the improper use of abstract conceptions to play off a metaphysical artifice such as those I have already pointed out in the conceptions "immaterial substance," "cause in general," "absolute reason," &