Accordingly then, from one point of view, which we certainly cannot abandon, because it is established by the objective laws of the world, which are _a priori_ valid, the world, with all that is in it, appears as an aimless, and therefore incomprehensible, play of an eternal necessity, an inscrutable and inexorable Αναγκη. Now, what is objectionable, nay, revolting, in this inevitable and irrefutable view of the world cannot be thoroughly done away with by any assumption except this, that as in one aspect every being in the world is a phenomenon, and necessarily determined by the laws of the phenomenon, in another aspect it is in itself _will_, and indeed absolutely _free will_, for necessity only arises through the forms which belong entirely to the phenomenon, through the principle of sufficient reason in its different modes. Such a will, then, must be self‐dependent, for, as free, _i.e._, as a thing in itself, and therefore not subject to the principle of sufficient reason, it cannot depend upon another in its being and nature any more than in its conduct and action. By this assumption alone will as much _freedom_ be supposed as is needed to counterbalance the inevitable strict _necessity_ which governs the course of the world. Accordingly one has really only the choice either of seeing that the world is a mere machine which runs on of necessity, or of recognising a free will as its inner being whose manifestation is not directly the action but primarily the _existence and nature_ of things. This freedom is therefore transcendental, and consists with empirical necessity, in the same way as the transcendental ideality of phenomena consists with their empirical reality. That only under this assumption the action of a man, in spite of the necessity with which it proceeds from his character and the motives, is yet _his own_ I have shown in my prize essay on the freedom of the will; with this, however, self‐ dependency is attributed to his nature. The same relation holds good of all things in the world. The strictest _necessity_, carried out honestly with rigid consistency, and the most perfect _freedom_, rising to omnipotence, had to appear at once and together in philosophy; but, without doing violence to truth, this could only take place by placing the whole _necessity_ in the _acting and doing_ (_Operari_), and the whole _freedom_ in the _being and nature_ (_Esse_). Thereby a riddle is solved which is as old as the world, simply because it has hitherto always been held upside down and the freedom persistently sought in the _Operari_, the necessity in the _Esse_. I, on the contrary, say: Every being without exception _acts_ with strict necessity, but it _exists_ and is what it is by virtue of its _freedom_. Thus with me freedom and necessity are to be met with neither more nor less than in any earlier system; although now one and now the other must be conspicuous according as one takes offence