238 THE WORLD-ENERGY 



teristic of spontaneity is in truth consciousness, then, the 

 World-Energy as spirit is the absolute process of Reason 

 unfolding itself into an infinite self -ordered world. 



But even so the absolute self -consistency of this pro- 

 cess seems to impose upon it a restraint. It must be so 

 and not otherwise. It is, then, in its very perfection and 

 self-consistency, the perfect expression of necessity. 

 Absolute Reason is absolute Necessity. Only as change- 

 less self -consistency, hence only as necessity, is it possible 

 that reason should realize itself. And unrealized reason 

 would of course not be reason, or be at all. 



But thus Necessity as the fixed order and self-consist- 

 ency of Reason is the indispensable basis of the realiza- 

 tion of reason. And yet reason realized is without ob- 

 struction. For Reason is the essence and soul of all 

 Reality. Whence it can be opposed by nothing but itself. 

 But its own self-opposition is nothing else than the true 

 equilibrium of its own self -consistency. It is thus, there- 

 fore, spontaneous and absolutely free. For Necessity, as 

 we have seen, is nothing else than the changeless law of 

 the self-consistency of Reason. In other words necessity, 

 in so far as it has any positive meaning, is of the very 

 essence of freedom, just as, on the other hand, freedom 

 is the concrete truth of necessity. Necessity is the 

 unalterable method of which Freedom is the actual 

 fulfilment. * 



d. THE WORLD-ENERGY AS SELF-REALIZING REASON OR 

 AS WILL. 



On arriving at the conception of the World-Energy as 

 spirit, the simplest phase of that conception was the first 



* Here we arrive at the highest conception of equilibrium as foreshadowed 

 in the Laws of Motion. 



