Necessary existence

“ You take a different view of your actions when you come to understand, when you are made to understand every day that your existence is necessary—you see, absolutely necessary—to another person. ”

“ Our chief distinctive and essential doctrines you hold as strongly as we do—the All-perfect Existence, the immortal human soul. From these necessarily follow conceptions of life and principles of conduct alien to those that have as necessarily grown up among a race which repudiates, ignores, and hates our two fundamental premises. ”

“ The condition of existence being what it is, a fallen condition, a state in which a proclivity to sin is the universal rule, how merciful is the appointment of a discipline which should directly minister blessing to the mass of mankind in several ways! ”

“ You see here the origin of the division of the One Life of Reason into individual life, and the ground of the necessity which there is, for all who have not raised themselves by Knowledge above mere Earthly and Finite perception, to continue in the faith of this personal existence. ”

“ In vain should we ask for what purpose existences arise, or become important; that purpose, to be such, must already have been important to some existence; and the only question that can be asked or answered is what recognised importance, what ideal values, actual existences involve. ”

“ And this question Nature can no more answer, for itself, than man can answer for himself when the question is put to him. Each must answer, I was nowhere—I did not exist. Each must answer, There was a power which called me into being, which prescribed the conditions of my existence, which gave me the capacities that I possess, which ordained the limitations within which I was to act. ”

“ In the case of mankind, the self-assertion, the unscrupulous seizing upon all that can be grasped, the tenacious holding of all that can be kept, which constitute the essence of the struggle for existence, have answered. ”

“ And this human existence, what is its solution, None, or rather itself! Existence is its own sanction, its own raison d'être, and he who coldly ravishes the sphinx of life has found a drastic solution far excelling that of any Œdipus. ”

“ That being, therefore, which has no other cause of its existence but the absolute necessity of its own nature, must, of necessity, have existed from everlasting, without beginning, and must, of necessity, exist to everlasting, without end. ”

“ That lies should be necessary to life is part and parcel of the terrible and questionable character of existence. ”

“ Things and finite spirits are not to be thought as developments of some inconceivable, mechanical necessity, but as the form in which the moral order—the highest expression of the reason we find in us—has existence or reality. ”

“ And the task set to the freedom of individual men, and to mankind as a whole, namely, to work out their own nature through their own labour and exertion, and to ascend to perfection—this deepest meaning of all individual and collective existence—would have its exact prelude and preparation in the general nature and evolution of all living creatures. ”

“ If the purpose would not have been fulfilled, it would either be His will or His wisdom decreed it, and He must acknowledge that the purpose of existence is the true human being - both the upper and lower - and each was created for a higher purpose. ”

“ We must see further than finite forms to gain the true sense of existence. And where shall we look to rest the gaze in the unsearchable realm of Mind? Let us look where we would walk, act as we would act in the possession of all power to create our own destiny. ”

“ Is not this point of view, however briefly and crudely expressed, the first principle of existence as it confronts each individual to-day, as it has confronted them in the past, and as it will continue to confront them always? ”

“ And to look existence in the face is to look God in the face; for the two cannot be separated, nor the responsibility for the laws of world-existence be shifted away from Him who created them or from That which constituted it. ”

“ The need may not have been more than blindly felt, but the necessities of the ages have, nevertheless, been supplied as they have arisen. In this, almost more than in anything else, the thinking man sees an ordered scheme of existence which, in other directions, the brutalities and injustices of an imperfect world would seem to deny. ”

“ When we make this statement we should try to realize what existence in the truth must necessarily mean, how it must feel to be in the consciousness of the spirit of such an existence, and what a life must hold in store that is permanently established on the very heights of that existence. ”

“ When we serve it, we must sternly cut off all that life in ourselves or in others that cannot ultimately conform to the universal will; but we have nothing but love for every form of sentient existence that can in any measure express this Will. ”

“ Each detail has to learn how to hold itself, to win a place for itself, to adapt itself to new conditions of existence, to obey other laws, to shape itself in accordance with other purposes, in short, to live its life as a thing of earth. ”

“ Is it a matter of course, is it quite obvious that they should exist at all, and that they should be exactly as they are? We do not here appeal without further ceremony to the saying “everything must have a cause, therefore the world also.” ”

“ Necessity gives a point of view which has important bearings upon our sentiments and behaviour. When we look upon events as necessary, our situation seems at first sight to lack freedom completely. In the creed of the ancients, as we know, necessity figured as Destiny. ”

“ Therefore, as we shall be able to maintain, despite all your unquestionable causal and moral determinations, there will be an aspect of your future life that will be free, and yours, and such as no causation can predetermine, and such as even God possesses only in so far as your unique individuality furnishes it as a fact in His world. ”

“ It shows this law to be truly transcendental, belonging not to transient material forms or physiological structure, nor to special psychical constitutions of men or races, nor organized instinct, nor subjective mental illusion, nor peculiar hereditary experience, nor transformed sense of realized or supposed utility, nor any local adventitious circumstances and training, but to the supreme super-sensible realm of universal and necessary ideas and truth, in which the universe of rational thought and divine order lives and moves and has its being and welfare. ”

“ But the necessity of recognizing some supreme personal will is often urged as a mental necessity, at least as a convenient theory. If the Supreme Being did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. ”

“ This is first decided by his freedom, and reason begins first by making his sensuous dependence boundless; a phenomenon that does not appear to me to have been sufficiently elucidated, considering its importance and universality. We know that the reason makes itself known to man by the demand for the absolute—the self-dependent and necessary. ”

“ Once let us settle that we are inherently capable of everlasting existence, we are then assured of the highest worth of our existence as measured by the ideals of Truth, of Beauty, and of Good, since these and their effectually directive operation in us are insured by their essential and constitutive place in our being. ”

“ This necessity, this immensity, this eternity, which our intelligence embraces, proves to us manifestly that these essential laws which we perceive in contingent beings are but the reproduction of a necessary and infinite type. ”

“ But what is meant by existence? That separation from the general Being of the world which is involved in individual life, and in the opposition of the subject which thinks, and the object which is thought about. ”

“ But it would be poor reasoning to conclude that, because our finite and narrow minds cannot at once grasp the purposes of an Omniscient and Infinite Being, therefore such a Being does not exist, when His works all around us testify in the plainest manner to His existence, His wisdom, and His goodness. ”

“ Here necessity constitutes the abstract force which is above all the particular spiritual, moral, and natural forces. These latter, however, partly possess the character of non-spiritual, merely natural force, which remains completely under the power of necessity, while 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. ”

“ These interests are, in fact, the eternal and universal forces of spiritual existence, the essential cravings of the human heart, the spontaneous and inevitable objects of human action, justifiable and rational in virtue of their own character, and consequently the very universal powers to which we have referred. ”

“ Every individual in such periods and circumstances feels that his existence, his [145] happiness, the existence and happiness of the family, the state, the success or failure of every undertaking, must depend upon these dispositions of nature. Certain natural events must occur at the proper time and certain others must not occur. How can influence be exercised over this fearful unknown, how can this domain of freedom be brought under subjection? ”

“ Any condition, therefore, which is essential to a state of society, becomes more and more an inseparable part of every person's conception of the state of things which he is born into, and which is the destiny of a human being. ”

“ His condition, and the privations whereby he holds his tenure of existence, are eloquent to a mind reflecting on the few real wants of mankind, and the advantages derivable from abstinent and temperate habits. ”

“ My Ought is my own will more rationally expressed than, at the instant of a capricious activity, I as yet consciously recognize. The consciousness of the more rational purpose, — of a purpose looming up, as it were, in the distance, beyond my present impulses, and yet even now seen as their own culmination, like a mountain crowning the ascent from the foothills, — the consciousness, I say, of such a purpose, is what we mean in Ethics by the Ought. ”

“ Before you can have life of a fine and noble type you must have life. Here is an absolute primal necessity; and it is the key to both evolutions, the natural and the spiritual. First the human creature must find its power and capability and must use these to some end, be it even a wrong end, rather than none; after this the ideal is caught and proper moral activity becomes possible. ”

“ And hence, being imbued with the opinion that all existence is particular, they made it their aim to determine, or at least to announce, what particular kind or character of existence the mind, or ego, had. ”

“ And the shock of having to transvalue all the accepted values, of having, in a world organized on the basis of fear, to conceive of a world organized on the basis of good will, made him a thinker in his own right. ”

“ And nevertheless, your future and your past, your aspect of individuality, and of freedom, and the various aspects wherein you are dependent upon the rest of the world, your whole life of deeds, and your attainment of your individual goal through your deeds, — all these manifold facts that are yours and that constitute you, are present at once to the Absolute, — as facts in the world, as temporal contents eternally viewed, — as a process eternally finished, — but eternally finished precisely by virtue of the temporal sequence of your deeds. ”

“ We have thus gradually prepared ourselves to define the relation between the Finite and the Absolute Will. We have studied as aspects of will, both selective attention and the nature of individuality. We have indicated, too, the sense in which, for our Fourth Conception, the world is the fulfilment of purpose. And now, to sum up so far, we do not say that any purpose, divine or human, first existing as a merely separate power, thereupon causes its own fulfilment. ”

“ Let us say then frankly that the education of the will is the object of our existence. ”

“ What mind, regulated by the ordinary principles of human belief, can possibly hold that every one of the thousand vital points which swim in a drop of stagnant water are inherently fitted to maintain their individuality throughout eternity? ”

“ He who asserts the doctrine of Necessity, means that, contemplating the events which compose the moral and material universe, he beholds only an immense and uninterrupted chain of causes and effects, no one of which could occupy any other place than it does occupy, or act in any other place than it does act. ”

“ A 'given' world can never be primary. [3] There must be a mind behind it. We fall back, therefore, upon the principle which must be postulated in the whole discussion—the unity and self-determining activity of the self-conscious mind.
II We may now proceed to the second problem of the will, the objection that human action is determined by motives, and that what we call freedom is nothing else than the necessary result of the pressure of motives upon the will. In other words, the conduct of the individual is always determined by the strongest motive. ”

“ And truth here is the obvious fact that since human nature is the point of existence to which good and evil refer, what is called value has its seat necessarily in human nature, and what is called existence has its seat necessarily in the nature of which human nature is a part and apart. ”