Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God/Lecture 11
Having given this explanation regarding the general scope of the characteristics of the content with which we are dealing, we shall now consider the course followed by the act of elevation first mentioned, in that particular form in which it is at present before us. This course consists simply in reasoning from the contingency of the world to an absolutely necessary Essence belonging to it. If we look at this syllogism as expressed in a formal way and at its particular elements, we find that it runs thus: The contingent does not rest upon itself, but, speaking generally, rests upon the presupposition of something which is in itself absolutely necessary, and which we call its essence, ground, or cause. But the world is contingent, the single things in it are contingent, and it as representing the whole is the aggregate of these; therefore the world presupposes the existence of something absolutely necessary in itself.
The determination from which this conclusion starts is the contingency of material things. If we take these things according as we find them in sensation and in ordinary thought, and if we compare the various processes which go on in the human mind, then we have a right to assert it to be a fact of experience that material things taken by themselves are regarded as contingent. Individual things do not come out of themselves, and do not pass away of themselves; being contingent, they are destined to drop away, and this is not something which happens to them in an accidental way merely, but is what constitutes their nature. Even if the course they follow is one which develops within themselves and is guided by rule and law, still it goes on till it reaches what is their end, or rather, it does nothing but lead up to their end; and so, too, their existence is interfered with in all kinds of ways by other things, and is brought to an end by external causes. If they are regarded as conditioned, then we can see that their conditions are things which exist independently outside of them, and which may correspond to them or not, and by which they are temporarily supported, or, it may be, are not. To begin with, they are seen to be co-ordinated in space without being ranged together in accordance with any other relation naturally belonging to them. The most heterogeneous elements are found side by side, and they can be separated without any kind of derangement being caused in the existence either of the one thing or the other. In the same way they succeed one another outwardly in time. They are, in fact, finite; and however independent they may seem, they are essentially devoid of independence, owing to the limits attaching to their finitude. They are; they are in a real sense, but their reality has the value of something which is merely a possibility; they are, and can therefore equally well either be or not be.
Their existence reveals the presence not only of connections between conditions, that is, the points of dependence owing to which they come to be characterised as contingent, but also the connections of cause and effect, the regular rules which govern the course they follow both inwardly and outwardly—laws, in fact. These elements of dependence, this conformity to law, raises them above the category of contingency into the region of necessity, and thus necessity is found within that sphere which we thought of as occupied by what was contingent. Contingency claims things in virtue of their isolation, and therefore they may either exist or not exist; but then, as governed by law, they are the opposite of what is contingent, they are not isolated, but are qualified, limited, related, in fact, to one another. They do not, however, fare any the better because of the presence of this antithesis in their nature. Their isolation gives them a semblance of independence; but the connection in which they stand with other things—with each other, that is—directly expresses the fact that these single things are not independent, shows that they are conditioned and are affected by other things, and are, in fact, necessarily conditioned by other things, and not by themselves. These necessary elements, these laws, would themselves consequently constitute the independent element. Anything which exists essentially in connection with something else has its essential character and stability not in itself, but in this connection. It is the connection upon which these are dependent. But these connections, when defined as causes and effects, the condition and the fact of being conditioned, and so on, have themselves a limited character, and are themselves contingent in relation to each other in the sense that any one of them may equally well exist or not exist, and may just as easily be disturbed by circumstances—that is, be interfered with by things which are themselves contingent, and have their active working and value destroyed, as the separate things over which they have no advantage in the matter of contingency. Those connections, on the other hand, to which necessity must be attributed, those laws, are not in any sense what we call things, but are rather abstractions. If the connection of necessity thus manifests itself in the region of contingent things in laws, and chiefly in the relations of cause and effect, this necessity itself takes the form of something conditioned, or limited—appears, in fact, as an outward necessity. It is itself relegated to the class of categories applying to things, both in virtue of their isolation, that is, their externality, and conversely in virtue of their being conditioned, of their limitation and dependence. In the connection expressed by causes and effects we get not only the satisfaction which is wanting in the empty unrelated isolation of things, which are just for this reason called contingent; but the indefinite abstraction which attaches to the expression “things,” the element of variableness in them, disappears in this relation of necessity in which things become causes, original facts, substances that are active and indeterminate. But in the connections which hold good in this sphere the causes are themselves finite; beginning as causes, their Being is isolated, and therefore contingent; or it is not isolated, and in that case they are effects, and are consequently not independent, but posited through an Other. The various series of causes and effects are partly contingent relatively to each other, and are partly themselves continued into the so-called Infinite, and thus contain in their content nothing but those situations and forms of existence of which each is finite in itself; and what ought to give stability to the connection of the series, the Infinite namely, is not only something above and beyond this world, but is a mere negative, the very meaning of which is relative merely, and is conditioned by what is to be negated by it, and is consequently for this very reason not negated.
Spirit, however, raises itself above this crowd of things contingent, above the merely outward and relative necessity involved in them, above the Infinite, which is a mere negative, and reaches a necessity which does not any longer go beyond itself, but is in-and-for-itself, included within itself, and is determined as complete in itself, while all other determinations are posited by it and are dependent upon it.
These may be in the form of ideas of an accidental or of a more concentrated kind, the essential moments of thought belonging to the inner life of the human spirit, to the reason which does not fully attain in a methodical and formal way the consciousness of its inner process, and still less gets so far as to be able to investigate those thought-determinations through which it passes, or the connections they involve. We have now got to see, however, if thought, which in the process of reasoning proceeds in a formal and methodical way, rightly conceives of and expresses the course followed in the elevation of the soul to God, which, so far, we have assumed to be a fact, and which we have been accustomed to deal with only in connection with the few fundamental characteristics belonging to it. Conversely, again, we have to find out whether those thoughts and the connection between them can be shown to be justified, and have their reality proved, by an examination of the thoughts in themselves, for it is only in this way that the elevation of the soul to God really ceases to be a supposition, and that the unstable element in any right conception of it disappears. We must, however, decline to enter upon this examination here, seeing that if it were demanded on its own account we should have to go on to the ultimate analysis of thought. It has to be carried out in a thorough way in logic, the science of thought; for I identify logic with metaphysic, since the latter, too, is really nothing but an attempt to deal with some concrete content, such as God, the world, the soul, but in such a way that these objects have to be conceived of as noumena, that is, we have to deal with the element of thought in them. At this point it will be preferable to take up the logical results merely, rather than the formal development. An investigation of the proofs of the existence of God cannot be undertaken independently at all, if it is required to have philosophical and scientific completeness. Science is the developed connection of the Idea in its totality. In so far as any individual object is lifted out of that totality, which must be the goal of the scientific development of the Idea, as representing the only method of exhibiting its truth, limits must be set to the investigation undertaken, and these it must presuppose to be definitely fixed, as is the case in other instances of scientific inquiry. Still the investigation may come to have an appearance of independence, owing to the fact that the unexplained presuppositions, which are what constitutes the limits of what is dealt with, and which analysis reaches in the course of its progress, are in themselves in harmony with consciousness. Every work contains such ultimate ideas, or fundamental principles, upon which either consciously or unconsciously the content is based. There is in it a circumscribed horizon of thoughts which are no further analysed, the horizon of which rests upon the culture it may be of a period, of a nation, or of some scientific circle, and beyond which there is no need to go. In fact it would be prejudicial to what is called popular comprehension to attempt to extend this horizon beyond the limits of ordinary ideas by analysing these, and so to make it include speculative or philosophical conceptions.
Still, since the subject of these lectures belongs in itself essentially to the domain of philosophy, we cannot dispense with abstract conceptions. We have, however, already mentioned those which belong to this first standpoint, and we have only to range them together in a definite way in order to reach the speculative element; for, speaking generally, to deal with anything in a speculative or philosophical way simply means to bring into connection the thoughts which we already have.
The thoughts, therefore, which have been already indicated, consist, first of all, of the following main characteristics: a thing, a law, &c., is contingent in virtue of its isolation; the fact of its existence or non-existence does not bring about any derangement or alteration so far as other things are concerned. Then the fact that it is quite as little kept in existence by them, and that any stability it gets owing to them is wholly insufficient, gives them that very insufficient semblance of independence which is just what constitutes their contingency. The idea of necessity as applied to any existing thing, on the other hand, requires that it should stand in some connection with other things, so that regarded in any of its aspects it is seen to be completely determined by other existing things, in the form of conditions or causes, and cannot be separated from them or come into being of itself, nor can there be any condition, cause, or fact of connection by means of which it can be so separated, nor any such instance of connection as can contradict the other which qualifies the thing. In accordance with this description we place the contingency of a thing in its isolation, in the want of perfect connection with other things. This is the first point.
Conversely, again, since an existing thing thus stands in a relation of perfect connection, it is in all its aspects conditioned and dependent, is in fact perfectly wanting in independence. It is, on the other hand, in necessity alone that we find the independence of a thing. What is necessary must be. This fact that it must be, expresses its independence by suggesting that what is necessary is, because it is. This is the other point.
We thus see that the necessity of anything requires two sorts of opposed characteristics: on the one hand, its independence, in which, however, it is isolated, and which makes its existence or non-existence a matter of indifference; and, on the other, its being based upon and contained in a complete relation to everything else whereby it is surrounded, and by the connection involved in which, it is kept in existence; this means that it is not independent. The necessary element is a recognised fact quite as much as the contingent element. Regarded from the point of view of the first of these ideas, everything exists in an orderly connection. The contingent is separated from the necessary, and points beyond it to a necessary something, which, however, when we look at it more closely, is itself included in contingency, just because, being posited by another, it is dependent. When, however, it is taken out of any such connection it is isolated, and is consequently directly contingent. The distinctions drawn are accordingly merely imaginary.
Since it is not our intention to examine further the nature of these thoughts, and since we wish in the meantime to leave the antithesis of necessity and contingency out of account, we shall confine ourselves to what is suggested by the idea we have given of them, namely, that neither of the determinations is sufficient to express necessity, but that for this both are required—independence, so that the necessary may not be mediated by an Other; and also the mediation of this independence in connection with the Other. They thus contradict each other, but since they both belong to the one necessity they must not contradict each other in the unity in which they are joined together in it. Our view of the matter renders it necessary that the thoughts which are united in this necessity should be brought into connection in our minds. In this unity the mediation with an Other will thus itself partake of independence, and this, as a reference to self, will have the mediation with an Other within itself. In this determination, however, both can be united only in such a way that the mediation with an Other is at the same time a mediation with self, that is, their union must imply that the mediation with an Other abolishes itself, and becomes a mediation with self. Thus the unity with self is not a unity which is abstract identity, such as we saw in the form of the isolation in which the thing is related only to itself, and in which its contingency lies. The one-sidedness, on account of which alone it is in contradiction with the equally one-sided mediation by an Other, is done away with, and these untruths have thus disappeared. The unity thus characterised is the true unity, and when truly known is the speculative or philosophical unity. Necessity as thus defined, since it unites in itself these opposite characteristics, is seen to be something more than a simple idea or a simple determinateness; and further, the disappearance of the opposite characteristics in something higher is not merely our act, or a matter with which we only have to do, in the sense that we only bring it about, but expresses the very nature and action of these characteristics themselves, since they are united in one characteristic. So, too, these two moments of necessity, namely, that its mediation with an Other is in itself, and that it does away with this mediation and posits itself by its own act because of this very unity, are not separate acts. In the mediation with an Other it relates itself to itself, that is, the Other through which it mediates itself with itself is itself. Thus as an Other it is negated; it is itself the Other, but only momentarily—momentarily without, however, introducing the quality of time into the notion, a quality which first appears when the notion comes to have a definite existence. This Other-Being or otherness is essentially something which disappears in something higher, and it is in determinate existence also that it appears as a real Other. But the absolute necessity is the necessity which is adequate to its notion or conception.