149.] Necessity, then, is potentially the one essence, self-same but
now full of content, in the reflected light of which its distinctions
take the form of independent realities. This self-sameness is at the
same time, as absolute form, the activity which reduces into dependency
and mediates into immediacy.--Whatever is necessary is through an
other, which is broken up into the mediating ground (the Fact and
the Activity) and an immediate actuality or accidental circumstance,
which is at the same time a Condition. The necessary, being through
an other, is not in and for itself: hypothetical, it is a mere result
of assumption. But this intermediation is just as immediately however
the abrogation of itself. The ground and contingent condition is
translated into immediacy, by which that dependency is now lifted up
into actuality, and the fact has closed with itself. In this return
to itself the necessary simply and positively _is,_ as unconditioned
actuality. The necessary is so, mediated through a circle of
circumstances: it is so, because the circumstances are so, and at the
same time it is so, unmediated: it is so, because it is.
(a) _Relationship of Substantiality._
150.] The necessary is in itself an absolute correlation of elements,
_i.e._ the process developed (in the preceding paragraphs), in which
the correlation also suspends itself to absolute identity.
In its immediate form it is the relationship of Substance and Accident.
The absolute self-identity of this relationship is Substance as such,
which as necessity gives the negative to this form of inwardness, and
thus invests itself with actuality, but which also gives the negative
to this outward thing. In this negativity, the actual, as immediate,
is only an accidental which through this bare possibility passes over
into another actuality. This transition is the identity of substance,
regarded as form-activity (§§ 148, 149).
151.] Substance is accordingly the totality of the Accidents,
revealing itself in them as their absolute negativity, (that is to
say, as absolute power,) and at the same time as the wealth of all
content. This content however is nothing but that very revelation,
since the character (being reflected in itself to make content) is
only a passing stage of the form which passes away in the power of
substance. Substantiality is the absolute form-activity and the power
of necessity: all content is but a vanishing element which merely
belongs to this process, where there is an absolute revulsion of form
and content into one another.
* * * * *
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