of the supposition that it were not, the reason that it is. Nothing, non-existence, is aimless, nonsensical, irrational. Existence alone has an aim, a foundation, rationality; existence is, because only existence is reason and truth; existence is the absolute necessity. What is the cause of conscious existence, of life? The need of life. But to whom is it a need? To that which does not live. It is not a being who saw that made the eye: to one who saw already, to what purpose would be the eye? No! only the being who saw not needed the eye. We are all come into the world without the operation of knowledge and will; but we are come that knowledge and will may exist. Whence, then, came the world? Out of necessity; not out of a necessity which lies in another being distinct from itself—that is a pure contradiction,—but out of its own inherent necessity; out of the necessity of necessity; because without the world there would be no necessity; without necessity, no reason, no understanding. The nothing, out of which the world came, is nothing without the world. It is true that thus, negativity, as the speculative philosophers express themselves—nothing is the cause of the world;—but a nothing which abolishes itself, i.e. a nothing which could not have existed if there had been no world. It is true that the world springs out of a want, out of privation, but it is false speculation to make this privation an ontological being: this want is simply the want which lies in the supposed non-existence of the world. Thus the world is only necessary out of itself and through itself. But the necessity of the world is the necessity of reason. The reason, as the sum of all realities,—for what are all the glories of the world without light, much more external light without internal light?—the reason is the most indispensable being—the profoundest and most essential necessity. In the reason first lies the self-consciousness of existence, self-conscious existence; in the reason is first revealed the end, the meaning of existence. Reason is existence objective to itself as its own end; the ultimate tendency of things. That which is an object to itself is the highest, the final being: that which has power over itself is almighty.
