Consciousness gives expression to the essence of freedom. Freedom not limited by anything is the essence of life, in man's consciousness. Inevitability without content is man's reason in its three forms. Freedom is the thing examined. Inevitability is what examines.
Freedom is the content.
Inevitability is the form. Only by separating the two sources of cognition, related to one another as form to content, do we get the mutually exclusive and separately incomprehensible conceptions of freedom and inevitability. Only by uniting them do we get a clear conception of man's life. Apart from these two concepts which in their union mutually define one another as form and content, no conception of life is possible. All that we know of the life of man is merely a certain relation of free will to inevitability, that is, of consciousness to the laws of reason.