We cannot have the slightest conception of
true freedom, because we do not ourselves possess it; when
it is spoken of, we either bring down what is said to the
level of our own notions, or at once declare all such talk to
be nonsense.
true freedom, because we do not ourselves possess it; when
it is spoken of, we either bring down what is said to the
level of our own notions, or at once declare all such talk to
be nonsense.
Fichte - Nature of the Scholar
In the world of sense, which proceeds on a
chain of material causes and effects, and in which whatever
happens depends merely on that which preceded it, it is
never of any moment how, and with what motives and inten-
tentions, an action is performed, but only what the action is.
Had it been the whole purpose of our existence to pro-
duce an earthly condition of our race, there would have been
required only an unerring mechanism by which our out-
ward actions might have been determined,--we would not
have needed to be move than wheels well fitted to the great
machine. Freedom would have been, not merely vain, but
even obstructive; a virtuous will wholly superfluous. The
world would, in that case, be most unskilfully directed, and
attain the purposes of its existence by wasteful extrava-
gance and circuitous byeways. Hadst thou, mighty World-
Spirit! withheld from us this freedom, which thou art now
constrained to adapt to thy plans with labour and contri-
vance; hadst thou rather at once compelled us to act in the
way in which thy plans required that we should act, thou
wouldst have attained thy purposes by a much shorter way,
as the humblest of the dwellers in these thy worlds can tell
thee. But I am free; and therefore such a chain of causes
and effects, in which freedom is absolutely superfluous and
and without aim, cannot exhaust my whole nature. I must
be free; for it is not the mere mechanical act, but the free
determination of free will, for the sake of duty and for the
ends of duty only,--thus speaks the voice of conscience
within us,--this alone it is which constitutes our true
worth. The bond with which this law of duty binds me is
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? BOOK III. PAITH.
345
a bond for living spirits only; it disdains to rule over a
dead mechanism, and addresses its decrees only to the living
and the free. It requires of me this obedience;--this obe-
dience therefore cannot be nugatory or superfluous. V
And now the Eternal World rises before me more bright-
ly, and the fundamental law of its order stands clearly and
distinctly apparent to my mental vision. In this world,
will alone, as it lies concealed from mortal eye in the secret
obscurities of the soul, is the first link in a chain of conse-
quences that stretches through the whole invisible realms of
spirit; as, in the physical world, action--a certain movement
of matter--is the first link in a material chain that runs
through the whole system of nature. The will is the effi-
cient, living principle of the world of reason, as motion is
the efficient, living principle of the world of sense. I stand
in the centre of two entirely opposite worlds:--a visible
world, in which action is the only moving power; and an
invisible and absolutely incomprehensible world, in which
will is the ruling principle. I am one of the primitive forces
of both these worlds. My will embraces both. This will is,
in itself, a constituent element of the super-sensual world;
for as I move it by my successive resolutions, I move and
change something in that world, and my activity thus ex-
tends itself throughout the whole, and gives birth to new
and ever-enduring results which henceforward possess a
real existence and need not again to be produced. This
will may break forth in a material act,--and this act belongs
to the world of sense and does there that which pertains to
a material act to do.
It is not necessary that I should first be severed from the
terrestrial world before I can obtain admission into the ce-
lestial one;--I am and live in it even now, far more truly
than in the terrestrial; even now it is my only sure founda-
tion, and the eternal life on the possession of which I have
already entered is the only ground why I should still pro-
long this earthly one. That which we call heaven does not
Ya
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? 346
THE VOCATION OF MAN.
lie beyond the grave; it is even here diffused around us,
and its light arises in every pure heart. My will is mine,
and it is the only thing that is wholly mine and entirely
dependent on myself; and through it I have already become
a citizen of the realm of freedom and of pure spiritual ac-
tivity. What determination of my will--of the only thing
by which I am raised from earth into this region--is best
adapted to the order of the spiritual world, is proclaimed to
me at every moment by my conscience, the bond that con-
stantly unites me to it;--and it depends solely on myself to
give my activity the appointed direction. Thus I cultivate
myself for this world; labour in it, and for it, in cultivating
one of its members; in it, and only in it, pursue my purpose
according to a settled plan, without doubt or hesitation,
certain of the result, since here no foreign power stands
opposed to my free will. That, in the world of sense, my
will also becomes an action, is but the law of this sensuous
world. I did not send forth the act as I did the will; only
the latter was wholly and purely my work,--it was all that
proceeded forth from me. It was not even necessary that
there should be another particular act on my part to unite
the deed to the will; the deed unites itself to it according
to the law of that second world with which I am connected
through my will, and in which this will is likewise an
original force, as it is in the first. I am indeed compelled,
when I regard my will, determined according to the dictates
of conscience, as a fact and an efficient cause in the world of
sense, to refer it to that earthly purpose of humanity as a
means to the accomplishment of an end ;--not as if I should
first survey the plan of the world and from this knowledge
calculate what I had to do; but the specific action, which
conscience directly enjoins me to do, reveals itself to me at
once as the only means by which, in my position, I can con-
tribute to the attainment of that end. Even if it should
afterwards appear as if this end had not been promoted--
nay, if it should even seem to have been hindered--by my
action, yet I can never regret it, nor perplex myself about it,
so surely as I have truly obeyed my conscience in perform-
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? BOOK III. FAITH.
347
ing this act. Whatever consequences it may have in this world, in the other world there can nothing but good result from it. And even in this world, should my action appear
to have failed of its purpose, my conscience for that very
reason commands me to repeat it in a manner that may
more effectually reach its end; or, should it seem to have
hindered that purpose,ybr that very reason to make good the
detriment and annihilate the untoward result. I will as I
ought, and the new deed follows. It may happen that the
consequences of this new action, in the world of sense, may
appear to me not more beneficial than those of the first;
but, with respect to the other world, I retain the same calm
assurance as before; and, in the present, it is again my
bounden duty to make good my previous failure by new ac- '*tion. And thus, should it still appear that, during my whole
earthly life, I have not advanced the good cause a single
hair's-breadth in this world, yet I dare not cease my efforts:
after every unsuccessful attempt, I must still believe that
the next will be successful. But in the spiritual world no
step is ever lost. In short, I do not pursue the earthly pur- . 1pose for its own sake alone, or as a final aim; but only be- \cause my true final aim, obedience to the law of conscience, does not present itself to me in this world in any other shape than as the advancement of this end. I may not
cease to pursue it, unless I were to deny the law of duty, or
unless that law were to manifest itself to me, in this life, in
some other shape than as a commandment to promote this
purpose in my own place;--I shall actually cease to pursue
it in another life in which that commandment shall have
set before me some other purpose wholly incomprehensible
to me here. In this life, I must will to promote it, because
I must obey; whether it be actually promoted by the deed
that follows my will thus fittingly directed is not my care;
I am responsible only for the will, but not for the result. C
Previous to the actual deed, I can never resign this purpose;
the deed, when it is completed, I may resign, and repeat it,
or improve it. Thus do I live and labour, even here, in my
most essential nature and in my nearest purposes, only for
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? 348
THE VOCATION OF MAN.
the other world; and my activity for it is the only thing of
which I am completely certain;--in the world of sense I
labour only for the sake of the other, and only because I
cannot work for the other without at least willing to work
for it.
I will establish myself firmly in this, to me, wholly new
view of my vocation. The present life cannot be rationally
regarded as the whole purpose of my existence, or of the
existence of a human race in general;--there is something
in me, and there is something required of me, which finds in
this life nothing to which it can be applied, and which is
entirely superfluous and unnecessary for the attainment of
the highest objects that can be attained on earth. There
must therefore be a purpose in human existence which lies
beyond this life. But should the present life, which ia
nevertheless imposed upon us, and which cannot be de-
signed solely for the development of reason, since even
awakened reason commands us to maintain it and to pro-
mote its highest purposes with all our powers,--should this
life not prove entirely vain and ineffectual, it must at least
have relation to a future life, as means to an end. Now
there is nothing in this present life, the ultimate conse-
quences of which do not remain on earth,--nothing where-
by we could be connected with a future life--but only our
virtuous will, which in this world, by the fundamental laws
thereof, is entirely fruitless. Only our virtuous will can it,
must it be, by which we can labour for another life, and for
the first and nearest objects which are there revealed to us;
and it is the consequences, invisible to us, of this virtuous will, through which we first acquire a firm standing-point in
that life from whence we may then advance in a farther
course of progress.
That our virtuous will in, and for and through itself, must
have consequences, we know already in this life, for reason
cannot command anything which is without a purpose; but
what these consequences may be,--nay, how it is even pos-
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? BOOK III. FAITH.
349
sible for a mere will to produce any effect at all,--as to this
we can form no conception whatever, so long as we are still
confined to this material world; and it is true wisdom not
to undertake an inquiry in which we know beforehand that
we shall be unsuccessful . With respect to the nature of
these consequences, the present life is therefore, in relation
to the future, aji/a^in^jgith^ In the future life, we shall possess these consequences, for we shall then proceed from
them as our starting-point, and build upon them as our
foundation; and this other life will thus be, in relation to
the consequences of our virtuous will in the present, a life --
m sight. In that other life, we shall also have an immediate
purpose set before us, as we have in the present; for our ac-
tivity must not cease. But we remain finite beings,--and
for finite beings there is but finite, determinate activity; and
every determinate act has a determinate end. As, in the
present life, the actually existing world as we findit around
us, the fitting adjustment of this world to the work we have
to do in it, the degree of culture and virtue already attained
by men, and our own physical powers,--as these stand rela-
ted to the purposes of this life,--so, in the future life, the consequences of our virtuous will in the present shall stand related to the purposes of that other existence. The present
is the commencement of our existence; the endowments re-
quisite for its purpose, and a firm footing in it, have been
freely bestowed on us:--the future is the continuation of
this existence, and in it we must acquire for ourselves a
commencement, and a definite standing-point.
And now the present life no longer appears vain and use-
less; for this and this alone it is given to us--that we may
acquire for ourselves a firm foundation in the future life,
and only by means of this foundation is it connected with
our whole external existence. It is very possible, that the
immediate purpose of this second life may prove as unat-
tainable by finite powers, with certainty and after a fixed
plan, as the purpose of the present life is now, and that even
there a virtuous will may apear superfluous and without
result . But it can never be lost there, any more than here,
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? 350
THE VOCATION OF MAN.
for it is the eternal and unalterable command of reason. Its
necessary efficacy would, in that case, direct us to a third
life, in which the consequences of our virtuous will in the
second life will become visible;--a life which during the
second life would again be believed in through faith, but
with firmer, more unwavering confidence, since we should
already have had practical experience of the truthfulness of
reason, and have regained the fruits of a pure heart which
had been faithfully garnered up in a previously completed
life.
As in the present life it is only from the command of con-
science to follow a certain course of action that there arises
our conception of a certain purpose in this action, and from
this our whole intuitive perception of a world of sense;--
so in the future, upon a similar, but now to us wholly in-
conceivable command, will be founded our conception of the
immediate purpose of that life; and upon this, again, our
intuitive perception of a world in which we shall set out
from the consequences of our virtuous will in the present
life. The present world exists for us only through the law
of duty; the other will be revealed to us, in a similar man-
ner, through another command of duty; for in no other
manner can a world exist for any reasonable being.
This, then, is my whole sublime vocation, my true nature.
I am a member of two orders:--the one purely spiritual, in
which I rule by my will alone; the other sensuous, in which
I operate by my deed. The whole end of reason is pure ac-
tivity, absolutely by itself alone, having no need of any in-
strument out of itself,--independence of everything which
is not reason,--absolute freedom. The will is the living
principle of reason,--is itself reason, when purely and simp-
ly apprehended; that reason is active by itself alone, means,
that pure will, merely as such, lives and rules. It is only
the Infinite Reason that lives immediately and wholly in
this purely spiritual order. The finite reason,--which does
not of itself constitute the world of reason, but is only one
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? BOOK XII. FAITH.
351
of its many members,--lives necessarily at the same time in a sensuous order; that is to say, in one which presents to it
another object beyond a purely spiritual activity:--a ma-
terial object, to be promoted by instruments and powers
which indeed stand under the immediate dominion of the
will, but whose activity is also conditioned by their own na-
tural laws. Yet as surely as reason is reason, must the will
operate absolutely by itself, and independently of the natu-
ral laws by which the material action is determined;--and
hence the sensuous life of every finite being points towards
a higher, into which the will, by itself alone, may open the
way, and of which it may acquire possession,--a possession
which indeed we must again sensuously conceive of as a
state, and not as a mere will.
These two orders,--the purely spiritual and the sensuous,
the latter consisting possibly of an innumerable series of
particular lives,--have existed since the first moment of
the development of an active reason within me, and still
proceed parallel to each other. The latter order is only a
phenomenon for myself, and for those with whom I am asso-
ciated in this life; the former alone gives it significance,
purpose, and value. I am immortal, imperishable, eternal,
as soon as I form the resolution to obey the laws of reason;
I do not need to become so. The super-sensual world is no
future world; it is now present; it can at no point of finite
existence be more present than at another; not more pre-
sent aftej>an existence of myriads of lives than at this mo-
ment. My sensuous existence may, in future, assume other
forms, but these are just as little the true life, as its pre-
sent form. By that rcs|ution I lay hold on eternity, and
cast off this earthly life and all other forms of sensuous life
which may yet lie before me in futurity, and place myself
far above them. I become the sole source of my own being
and its phenomena, and, henceforth, unconditioned by any-
thing without me, I have life in myself. My will, which is
directed by no foreign agency in the order of the super-sen-
sual world, but by myself alone, is this source of true life,
and of eternity.
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? 352
THE VOCATION OF MAN.
It is my will alone which is this source of true life, and
i if eternity;--only by recognising this will as the peculiar
seat of moral goodness, and by actually raising it thereto,
do I obtain the assurance and the possession of that super-
sensual world.
Without regard to any conceivable or visible object, with-
out inquiry as to whether my will may be followed by any
result other than the mere volition,--I must will in accor-
dance with the ,m/>ro]JaWr My will stands alone, apart
from all that is not itself, and is its own world merely by it-
self and for itself; not only as being itself an absolutely
first, primary and original power, before which there is no
preceding influence by which it may be governed, but also
as being followed by no conceivable or comprehensible second
step in the series, coming after it, by which its activity may
be brought under the dominion of a foreign law. Did there
proceed from it any second, and from this again a third re-
sult, and so forth, in any conceivable sensuous world oppos-
ed to the spiritual world, then would its strength be broken
by the resistance it would encounter from the independent
elements of such a world which it would set in motion; the
mode of its activity would no longer exactly correspond to
the purpose expressed in the volition; and the will would
no longer remain free, but be partly limited by the peculiar
laws of its heterogeneous sphere of action. And thus must
I actually regard the will in the present sensous world, the
only one known to me. I am indeed compelled to believe,
and consequently to act as if I thought, that by my mere
volition, my tongue, my hand, or my foot, might be set in
motion; but how a mere aspiration, an impress of intelli-
gence upon itself, such as will is, can be the principle of
motion to a heavy material mass,--this I not only find it
impossible to conceive, but the mere assertion is, before the
tribunal of the understanding, a palpable absurdity;--here
the movement of matter even in myself can be explained
only by the internal forces of matter itself.
Such a view of my will as I have taken, can, however, be
attained only through an intimate conviction that it is not
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? BOOK III. FAITH.
353
merely the highest active principle for this world,--which it
certainly might be, without having freedom in itself, by the
mere influence of the system of the universe, perchance, as
we must conceive of a formative power in Nature,--but
that it absolutely disregards all earthly objects, and generally
all objects lying out of itself, and recognises itself, for its
own sake, as its own ultimate end. But by such a view of
my will I am at once directed to a super-sensual order of
things, in which the will, by itself alone and without any
instrument lying out of itself, becomes an efficient cause
in a sphere which, like itself, is purely spiritual, and is
thoroughly accessible to it. That moral volition is demand-
ed of us absolutely for its own sake alone,--a truth which
I discover only as a fact in my inward consciousness, and to
the knowledge of which I cannot attain in any other way:
--this was the first step of my thought. That this demand
is reasonable, and the source and standard of all else that is
reasonable; that it is not modelled upon any other thing
whatever, but that all other things must, on the contrary,
model themselves upon it, and be dependent upon it,--a con-
viction which also I cannot arrive at from without, but can
attain only by inward experience, by means of the unhesitat-
ing and immovable assent which I freely accord to this de-
mand:--this was the second step of my thought . And from
these two terms I have attained to faith in a super-sensual
Eternal World. If I abandon the former, the latter falls to
the ground. If it were true,--as many say it is, assuming it
without farther proof as self-evident and extolling it as the
highest summit of human wisdom,--that all human virtue
must have before it a certain definite external object, and
that it must first be assured of the possibility of attaining
this object, before it can act and before it can become vir-
tue; that, consequently, reason by no means contains within
itself the principle and the standard of its own activity, but
must receive this standard from without, through contem-
plation of an external world;--if this were true, then might
the ultimate end of our existence be accomplished here
below; human nature might be completely developed and
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? 354
THE VOCATION OF MAN.
exhausted by our earthly vocation, and we should have no
rational ground for raising our thoughts above the present
life.
But every thinker who has anywhere acquired those first
principles even historically, moved perhaps by a mere love
of the new and unusual, and who is able to prosecute a
correct course of reasoning from them, might speak and
teach as I have now spoken to myself. He would then
present us with the thoughts of some other being, not with
his own; everything would float before him empty and
without significance, because he would be without the sense
whereby he might apprehend its reality. He is a blind
man, who, upon certain true principles concerning colours
which he has learned historically, has built a perfectly cor-
rect theory of colour, notwithstanding that there is in reality
no colour existing for him;--he can tell how, under certain
conditions, it must be; but to him it is not so, because he
does not stand under these conditions. The faculty by
which we lay hold on Eternal Life is to be attained only by
^actually renouncing the sensuous and its objects, and sacri-
ficing them to that law which takes cognizance of our will
only and not of our actions;--renouncing them with the
firmest conviction that it is reasonable for us to do so,--nay,
that it is the only thing reasonable for us, By this renun-
ciation of the Earthly, does faith in the Eternal first arise
in our soul, and is there enshrined apart, as the only sup-
port to which we can cling after we have given up all else,
--as the only animating principle that can elevate our
minds and inspire our lives. We must indeed, according to
the figure of a sacred doctrine, first "die unto the world and
be born again, before we can enter the kingdom of God. "
I see--Oh I now see clearly before me the cause of
my former indifference and blindness concerning spiritual
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? BOOK III. FAITH.
355
things! Absorbed by mere earthly objects, lost in them
with all our thoughts and efforts, moved and urged onward
only by the notion of a result lying beyond ourselves,--by
the desire of such a result and of our enjoyment therein,--
insensible and dead to the pure impulse of reason, which
gives a law to itself, and offers to our aspirations a purely
spiritual end,--the immortal Psyche remains, with fettered
pinions, fastened to the earth. Our philosophy becomes
the history of our own heart and life; and according to
what we ourselves are, do we conceive of man and his voca-
tion. Never impelled by any other motive than the desire
after what can be actually realized in this world, there is for
us no true freedom,--no freedom which holds the ground of
its determination absolutely and entirely within itself. Our
freedom is, at best, that of the self-forming plant; not es-
sentially higher in its nature, but only more artistical in its
results; not producing a mere material form with roots,
leaves, and blossoms, but a mind with impulses, thoughts,
and actions.
We cannot have the slightest conception of
true freedom, because we do not ourselves possess it; when
it is spoken of, we either bring down what is said to the
level of our own notions, or at once declare all such talk to
be nonsense. Without the idea of freedom, we are likewise
without the faculty for another world. Everything of this
kind floats past before us like words that are not addressed
to us; like a pale shadow, without colour or meaning, which
we know not how to lay hold of or retain. We leave it as
we find it, without the least participation or sympathy. Or
should we ever be urged by a more active zeal to consider
it seriously, we then convince ourselves to our own satisfac-
tion that all such ideas are untenable and worthless re-
veries, which the man of sound understanding unhesitating-
ly rejects; and according to the premises from which we
proceed, made up as they are of our inward experiences, we
are perfectly in the right, and secure from either refutation
or conversion so long as we remain what we are. The ex-
cellent doctrines which are taught amongst us with a special
authority, concerning freedom, duty, and everlasting life,
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? 35G
THE VOCATION OF MAN.
become to us romantic fables, like those of Tartarus and the
Elysian fields; although we do not publish to the world
this our secret opinion, because we find it expedient, by
means of these figures, to maintain an outward decorum
among the populace; or, should we be less reflective, and
ourselves bound in the chains of authority, then we sink to
the level of the common mind, and believing what, thus
understood, would be mere foolish fables, we find in those
pure spiritual symbols only the promise of continuing
throughout eternity the same miserable existence which we
possess here below.
In one word :--only by the fundamental improvement of
my will does a new light arise within me concerning my
existence and vocation; without this, however much I may
speculate, and with what rare intellectual gifts soever I may
be endowed, darkness remains within me and around me.
The improvement of the heart alone leads to true wisdom.
Let then my whole life be unceasingly devoted to this one purpose.
IV.
My Moral Will, merely as such, in and through itself, shall
certainly and invariably produce consequences; every deter-
mination of my will in accordance with duty, although no
action should follow it, shall operate in another, to me in-
comprehensible, world, in which nothing but this moral
determination of the will shall possess efficient activity.
What is it that is assumed in this conception?
Obviously a Law; a rule absolutely without exception,
according to which a will determined by duty must have
consequences; just as in the material world which sur-
rounds me I assume a law according to which this ball,
when thrown by my hand with this particular force, in this
particular direction, necessarily moves in such a direction
with a certain degree of velocity,--perhaps strikes another
ball with a certain amount of force, which in its turn moves
on with a certain velocity,--and so on. As here, in the
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? BOOK III. FAITH.
357
mere direction and motion of my hand, I already perceive
and apprehend all the consequent directions and move-
ments, with the same certainty as if they were already
present before me; even so do I embrace by means of my vir-
tuous will a series of necessary and inevitable consequences
in the spiritual world, as if they were already present be-
fore me; only that I cannot define them as I do those in
the material world,--that is, I only know that they must be,
but not how they shall be;--and even in doing this, I con-
ceive of a Law of the spiritual world, in which my pure will
is one of the moving forces, as my hand is one of the moving
forces of the material world. My own firm confidence in
these results, and the conceptions of this Law of the spiri-
tual world, are one and the same;--they are not two
thoughts, one of which arises by means of the other, but
they are entirely the same thought; just as the confidence
with which I calculate on a certain motion in a material
body, and the conception of a mechanical law of nature on
which that motion depends, are one and the same. The
conception of a Law expresses nothing more than the firm,
immovable confidence of reason in a principle, and the ab-
solute impossibility of admitting its opposite.
I assume such a law of a spiritual world,--not given by
my will nor by the will of any finite being, nor by the will
of all finite beings taken together, but to which my will, and
the will of all finite beings, is subject. Neither I, nor any fi-
nite and therefore sensuous being, can conceive how a mere
will can have consequences, nor what may be the true nature
of those consequences; for herein consists the essential cha-
racter of our finite nature,--that we are unable to conceive
this,--that having indeed our will, as such, wholly within
our power, we are yet compelled by our sensuous nature to
regard the consequences of that will as sensuous states:--
how then can I, or any other finite being whatever, propose
to ourselves as objects, and thereby give reality to, that
which we can neither imagine nor conceive? I cannot say
that, in the material world, my hand, or any other body
which belongs to that world and is subject to the universal
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? 358
THE VOCATION OF MAN.
law of gravity, brings this law into operation;--these bodies
themselves stand under this law, and are able to set another
body in motion only in accordance with this law, and only
in so far as that body, by virtue of this law, partakes of the
universal moving power of Nature. Just as little can a
finite will give a law to the super-sensual world, which no
finite spirit can embrace; but all finite wills stand under
the law of that world, and can produce results therein only
inasmuch as that law already exists, and inasmuch as they
themselves, in accordance with the form of that law which
is applicable to finite wills, bring themselves under its con-
ditions, and within the sphere of its activity, by moral obe-
dience;--by moral obedience, I say, the only tie which unites
them to that higher world, the only nerve that descends from
it to them, and the only organ through which they can re-act
upon it. As the universal power of attraction embraces all
bodies, and holds them together in themselves and with each
other, and the movement of each separate body is possible
only on the supposition of this power, so does that super-sen-
sual law unite, hold together, and embrace all finite reason-
able beings. My will, and the will of all finite beings, may
be regarded from a double point of view :--partly as a mere
volition, an internal act directed upon itself alone, and, in so
far, the will is complete in itself, concluded in this act of vo-
lition ;--partly as something beyond this, a fact. It assumes
the latter form to me, as soon as I regard it as completed;
but it must also become so beyond me:--in the world of
sense, as the moving principle, for instance, of my hand, from
the movement of which, again, other movements follow;--in
the super-sensual world, as the principle of a series of spiri-
tual consequences of which I have no conception. In the
former point of view, as a mere act of volition, it stands wholly
within my own power; its assumption of the latter charac-
ter, that of an active first principle, depends not upon me,
but on a law to which I myself am subject;--on the law of
nature in the world of sense, on a super-sensual law in the world of pure thought.
What, then, is this law of the spiritual world which I con-
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? BOOK III. FAITH.
359
ceive? This idea now stands before me, in fixed and per-
fect shape; I cannot, and dare not add anything whatever
to it; I have only to express and interpret it distinctly. It
is obviously not such as I may suppose the principle of my
own, or any other possible sensuous world, to be,--a fixed,
inert existence, from which, by the encounter of a will, some
internal power may be evolved,--something altogether dif-
ferent from a mere will. For,--and this is the substance of
my belief,--my will, absolutely by itself, and without the
intervention of any instrument that might weaken its ex-
pression, shall act in a perfectly congenial sphere,--reason
upon reason, spirit upon spirit;--in a sphere to which
nevertheless it does not give the law of life, activity, and
progress, but which has that law in itself;--therefore, upon
self-active reason. But self-active reason is will. The law
of the super-sensual world must, therefore, be a Will:--A
Will which operates purely as will; by itself, and absolutely
without any instrument or sensible material of its activity;
which is, at the same time, both act and product; with
whom to will is to do, to command is to execute; in which
therefore the instinctive demand of reason for absolute free-
dom and independence is realized:--A Will, which in itself
is law; determined by no fancy or caprice, through no pre-
vious reflection, hesitation or doubt:--but eternal, un-
changeable, on which we may securely and infallibly rely, as
the physical man relies with certainty on the laws of his
world:--A Will in which the moral will of finite beings, and
this alone, has sure and unfailing results; since for it all
else is unavailing, all else is as if it were not.
That sublime Will thus pursues no solitary path with-
drawn from the other parts of the world of reason. There
is a spiritual bond between Him and all finite rational be-
ings; and He himself is this spiritual bond of the rational
universe. Let me will, purely and decidedly, my duty; and
He wills that, in the spiritual world at least, my will shall
prosper. Every moral resolution of a finite being goes up
before Him, and--to speak after the manner of mortals--
moves and determines Him, not in consequence of a mo-
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? 360
THE VOCATION OF MAN.
mentary satisfaction, but in accordance with the eternal law
of His being. With surprising clearness does this thought,
which hitherto was surrounded with darkness, now reveal
itself to my soul; the thought that my will, merely as such,
and through itself, shall have results. It has results, because
it is immediately and infallibly perceived by another Will
to which it is related, which is its own accomplishment and
the only living principle of the spiritual world; in Him it
has its first results, and through Him it acquires an in-
fluence on the whole spiritual world, which throughout is
but a product of that Infinite Will. Thus do I approach--the mortal must speak in his own
language--thus do I approach that Infinite Will; and the
voice of conscience in my soul, which teaches me in every
situation of life what I have there to do, is the channel
through which again His influence descends upon me. That
voice, sensualized by my environment, and translated into
my language, is the oracle of the Eternal World which an-
nounces to me how I am to perform my part in the order of
the spiritual universe, or in the Infinite Will who is Him-
self that order. I cannot, indeed, survey or comprehend
that spiritual order, and I need not to do so;--I am but a
link in its chain, and can no more judge of the whole, than
a single tone of music can judge of the entire harmony of
which it forms a part. But what I myself ought to be in
this harmony of spirits I must know, for it is only I myself
who can make me so,--and this is immediately revealed to
me by a voice whose tones descend upon me from that other
world. Thus do I stand connected with the One who alone
has existence, and thus do I participate in His being.
There is nothing real, lasting, imperishable me, but these
two elements:--the voice of conscience,_ajnd,jnjr_ft^e_Qbe-dience. Byjthe first, thespiritual world bows down to me,
and embraces me as one of its members; by the_secondJL
raise myself into this world, ,ipprphf-nd it,, and rt>>->y. t, ypon
it. That Infinite Will is the mediator between Jit _and-
'me; for He himself is the original source both of it and me. This is the one True and Imperishable for which my
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? BOOK III. FAITH.
3G1
Will yogrr<? oYftn frnrv its inmost depths; all else is meie.
appep^anofj wuuahiag, and ovor i"of"''n'r'^ in_a_new_
semblance. _
This Will unites me with himself; He also unites me
with all finite beings like myself, and is the common media-
tor between us all. This is the great mystery of the in-
visible world, and its fundamental law, in so far as it is a
world or system of many individual wills:--the union, and
direct reciprocal action, of many separate and independent
wills; a mystery which already lies clearly before every eye
in the present life, without attracting the notice of any one,
or being regarded as in any way wonderful. The voice of
conscience, which imposes on each his particular duty, is the
light-beam on which we come forth from the bosom of the
Infinite, and assume our place as particular individual be-
ings; it fixes the limits of our personality; it is thus the
true original element of our nature, the foundation and ma-
terial of all our life. The absolute freedom 'of tlm wjjlj.
whinh wp bring rlnwn with_ us. from the Infinite into the
wnrlfl nf Tirr)^, is the principle of this our life. I act:--and,
the sensible intuition through which alone I become a per-
sonal intelligence being supposed, it is easy to conceive how
I must necessarily know of this my action,--I know it, be-
cause it is I myself who act;--it is easy to conceive how, by
means of this sensible intuition, my spiritual act appears to
me as a fact in a world of sense; and how, on the other
hand, by the same sensualization, the law of duty which, in
itself, is a purely spiritual law, should appear to me as the
command to such an action ;--it is easy to conceive, how an
actually present world should appear to me as the condition
of this action, and, in part, as the consequence and product
of it. Thus far I remain within myself and upon my own
territory; everything here, which has an existence for me,
unfolds itself purely and solely from myself; I see every-
where only myself, and no true existence out of myself. But
in this my world I admit, also, the operations of other be-
ings, separate and independent of me, as much as I of them.
Ab
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? 362
THE VOCATION OF MAN.
How these beings can themselves know of the influences
which proceed from them, may easily be conceived; they
know of them in the same way in which I know of my own.
But how / can know of them is absolutely inconceivable;
just as it is inconceivable how they can possess that know-
ledge of my existence, and its manifestations, which never-
theless I ascribe to them. How do they come within my
world, or I within theirs,--since the principle by which the
consciousness of ourselves, of our operations, and of their
sensuous conditions, is deduced from ourselves,--i. e. that
each individual must undoubtedly know what he himself
does,--is here wholly inapplicable? How have free spirits
knowledge of free spirits, since we know that free spirits are
the only reality, and that an independent world of sense,
through which they might act on each other, is no longer to
be taken into account. Or shall it be said,--I perceive reason-
able beings like myself by the changes which they produce
in the world of sense? Then I ask again,--How dost thou
perceive these changes? I comprehend very well how thou
canst perceive changes which are brought about by the
mere mechanism of nature; for the law of this mechanism
is no other than the law of thy own thought, according to
which, this world being once assumed, it is carried out into
farther developments. But the changes of which we now
speak are not brought about by the 'mere mechanism of na-
ture, but by a free will elevated above all nature; and only
in so far as thou canst regard them in this character, canst
thou infer from them the existence of free beings like thy-
self. Where then is the law within thyself, according to
which thou canst realize the determinations of other wills
absolutely independent of thee? In short, this mutual
recognition and reciprocal action of free beings in this
world, is perfectly inexplicable by the laws of nature or of
thought, and can be explained only through the One in whom
they are united, although to each other they are separate;
through the Infinite Will who sustains and embraces them
all in His own sphere. Not immediately from thee to me,
nor from me to thee, flows forth the knowledge which we
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? BOOK III. FAITH.
363
have of each other;--we are separated by an insurmount-
able barrier. Only through the common fountain of our
spiritual being do we know of each other; only in Him do
we recognise each other, and influence each other. "Here
reverence the image of freedom upon the earth;--here, a
work which bears its impress :"--thus is it proclaimed with-
in me by the voice of that Will, which speaks to me only in
so far as it imposes duties upon me;--and the only prin-
ciple through which I recognise thee and thy work, is the
command of conscience to respect them.
Whence, then, our feelings, our sensible intuitions, our dis-
cursive laws of thought, on all which is founded the exter-
nal world which we behold, in which we believe that we ex-
ert an influence on each other? With respect to the two
last--our sensible intuitions and our laws of thought--to
say, these are laws of reason in itself, is only to give no sa-
tisfactory answer at all. For us, indeed, who are excluded
from the pure domain of reason in itself, it may be impos-
sible to think otherwise, or to conceive of reason under any
other law. But the true law of reason in itself is the practical law, the law of the super-sensual world, or of that sub-1lime WilL And, leaving this for a moment undecided, whence
comes our universal agreement as to feelings, which, never-
theless, are something positive, immediate, inexplicable 1
On this agreement in feeling, perception, and in the laws of
thought, however, it depends that we all behold the same
external world.
"It is a harmonious, although inconceivable, limitation of
the finite rational beings who compose our race; and only
by means of such a harmonious limitation do they become a
race:"--thus answers the philosophy of mere knowledge,
and here it must rest as its highest point. But what can
set a limit to reason but reason itself 1--what can limit all
finite reason but the Infinite Reason? This universal agree-
ment concerning a sensible world,--assumed and accepted
by us as the foundation of all our other life, and as the
sphere of our duty--which, strictly considered, is just as in-
comprehensible as our unanimity concerning the products of
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? 3G4
THE VOCATION OF MAN.
our reciprocal freedom,--this agreement is the result of the
One Eternal Infinite WilL Our faith, of which we have
spoken as faith in duty, is only faith in Him, in His reason,
in His truth. What, then, is the peculiar and essential
truth which we accept in the world of sense, and in which
we believe? Nothing less than that from our free and faith-
ful performance of our duty in this world, there will arise to
us throughout eternity a life in which our freedom and mo-
rality may still continue their development. If this be true,
then indeed is there truth in our world, and the only truth
possible for finite beings; and it must be true, for this world
is the result of the Eternal Will in us,--and that Will, by
the law of His own being, can have no other purpose with
respect to finite beings, than that which we have set forth.
That Eternal Will is thus assuredly the Creator of the
World, in the only way in which He can be so, and in the
only way in which it needs creation:--in the finite reason.
Those who regard Him as building up a world from an
everlasting inert matter, which must still remain inert and
lifeless,--like a vessel made by human hands, not an eternal
procession of His self-development,--or who ascribe to Him
the production of a material universe out of nothing, know
neither the world nor Him. If matter only can be reality,
then were the world indeed nothing, and throughout all eter-
nity would remain nothing. Reason alone exists:--the In-
finite in Himself,--the finite in Him and through Him.
Only in our minds has He created a world; at least that
from which we unfold it, and that by which we unfold it;--
the voice of duty, and harmonious feelings, intuitions, and
laws of thought. It is His light through which we behold
the light, and all that it reveals to us. In our minds He
still creates this world, and acts upon it by acting upon our
minds through the call of duty, as soon as another free be-
ing changes aught therein. In our minds He upholds this
world, and thereby the finite existence of which alone we
are capable, by continually evolving from each state of our
existence other states in succession. When He shall have
sufficiently proved us according to His supreme designs, for
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? BOOK III. FAITH.
365
our next succeeding vocation, and we shall have sufficiently cultivated ourselves for entering upon it, then, by that I
which we call death, will He annihilate for us this life, and introduce us to a new life, the product of our virtuous ac-1tions. All our life is His life. We are in His hand, and abide therein, and no one can pluck us out of His hand. We are eternal, because He is eternal. ^
Sublime and Living Will! named by no name, compassed
by no thought! I may well raise my soul to Thee, for Thou and I are not divided. Thy voice sounds within me, mine
resounds in Thee; and all my thoughts, if they be but good
and true, live in Thee also. In Thee, the Incomprehensible,
I myself, and the world in which I live, become clearly com-
prehensible to me; all the secrets of my existence are laid
open, and perfect harmony arises in my soul.
Thou art best known to the child-like, devoted, simple
mind. . To it Thou art the searcher of hearts, who seest its
inmost depths; the ever-present true witness of its thoughts,
who knowest its truth, who knowest it though all the world
know it not. Thou art the Father who ever desirest its
good, who rulest all things for the best. To Thy will it un-
hesitatingly resigns itself: "Do with me," it says, "what
thou wilt; I know that it is good, for it is Thou who doest
it. " The inquisitive understanding, which has heard of
Thee, but seen Thee not, would teach us thy nature; and,
as Thy image, shows us a monstrous and incongruous
shape, which the sagacious laugh at, and the wise and good
abhor.
I hide my face before Thee, and lay my hand upon my
mouth.
chain of material causes and effects, and in which whatever
happens depends merely on that which preceded it, it is
never of any moment how, and with what motives and inten-
tentions, an action is performed, but only what the action is.
Had it been the whole purpose of our existence to pro-
duce an earthly condition of our race, there would have been
required only an unerring mechanism by which our out-
ward actions might have been determined,--we would not
have needed to be move than wheels well fitted to the great
machine. Freedom would have been, not merely vain, but
even obstructive; a virtuous will wholly superfluous. The
world would, in that case, be most unskilfully directed, and
attain the purposes of its existence by wasteful extrava-
gance and circuitous byeways. Hadst thou, mighty World-
Spirit! withheld from us this freedom, which thou art now
constrained to adapt to thy plans with labour and contri-
vance; hadst thou rather at once compelled us to act in the
way in which thy plans required that we should act, thou
wouldst have attained thy purposes by a much shorter way,
as the humblest of the dwellers in these thy worlds can tell
thee. But I am free; and therefore such a chain of causes
and effects, in which freedom is absolutely superfluous and
and without aim, cannot exhaust my whole nature. I must
be free; for it is not the mere mechanical act, but the free
determination of free will, for the sake of duty and for the
ends of duty only,--thus speaks the voice of conscience
within us,--this alone it is which constitutes our true
worth. The bond with which this law of duty binds me is
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? BOOK III. PAITH.
345
a bond for living spirits only; it disdains to rule over a
dead mechanism, and addresses its decrees only to the living
and the free. It requires of me this obedience;--this obe-
dience therefore cannot be nugatory or superfluous. V
And now the Eternal World rises before me more bright-
ly, and the fundamental law of its order stands clearly and
distinctly apparent to my mental vision. In this world,
will alone, as it lies concealed from mortal eye in the secret
obscurities of the soul, is the first link in a chain of conse-
quences that stretches through the whole invisible realms of
spirit; as, in the physical world, action--a certain movement
of matter--is the first link in a material chain that runs
through the whole system of nature. The will is the effi-
cient, living principle of the world of reason, as motion is
the efficient, living principle of the world of sense. I stand
in the centre of two entirely opposite worlds:--a visible
world, in which action is the only moving power; and an
invisible and absolutely incomprehensible world, in which
will is the ruling principle. I am one of the primitive forces
of both these worlds. My will embraces both. This will is,
in itself, a constituent element of the super-sensual world;
for as I move it by my successive resolutions, I move and
change something in that world, and my activity thus ex-
tends itself throughout the whole, and gives birth to new
and ever-enduring results which henceforward possess a
real existence and need not again to be produced. This
will may break forth in a material act,--and this act belongs
to the world of sense and does there that which pertains to
a material act to do.
It is not necessary that I should first be severed from the
terrestrial world before I can obtain admission into the ce-
lestial one;--I am and live in it even now, far more truly
than in the terrestrial; even now it is my only sure founda-
tion, and the eternal life on the possession of which I have
already entered is the only ground why I should still pro-
long this earthly one. That which we call heaven does not
Ya
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? 346
THE VOCATION OF MAN.
lie beyond the grave; it is even here diffused around us,
and its light arises in every pure heart. My will is mine,
and it is the only thing that is wholly mine and entirely
dependent on myself; and through it I have already become
a citizen of the realm of freedom and of pure spiritual ac-
tivity. What determination of my will--of the only thing
by which I am raised from earth into this region--is best
adapted to the order of the spiritual world, is proclaimed to
me at every moment by my conscience, the bond that con-
stantly unites me to it;--and it depends solely on myself to
give my activity the appointed direction. Thus I cultivate
myself for this world; labour in it, and for it, in cultivating
one of its members; in it, and only in it, pursue my purpose
according to a settled plan, without doubt or hesitation,
certain of the result, since here no foreign power stands
opposed to my free will. That, in the world of sense, my
will also becomes an action, is but the law of this sensuous
world. I did not send forth the act as I did the will; only
the latter was wholly and purely my work,--it was all that
proceeded forth from me. It was not even necessary that
there should be another particular act on my part to unite
the deed to the will; the deed unites itself to it according
to the law of that second world with which I am connected
through my will, and in which this will is likewise an
original force, as it is in the first. I am indeed compelled,
when I regard my will, determined according to the dictates
of conscience, as a fact and an efficient cause in the world of
sense, to refer it to that earthly purpose of humanity as a
means to the accomplishment of an end ;--not as if I should
first survey the plan of the world and from this knowledge
calculate what I had to do; but the specific action, which
conscience directly enjoins me to do, reveals itself to me at
once as the only means by which, in my position, I can con-
tribute to the attainment of that end. Even if it should
afterwards appear as if this end had not been promoted--
nay, if it should even seem to have been hindered--by my
action, yet I can never regret it, nor perplex myself about it,
so surely as I have truly obeyed my conscience in perform-
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? BOOK III. FAITH.
347
ing this act. Whatever consequences it may have in this world, in the other world there can nothing but good result from it. And even in this world, should my action appear
to have failed of its purpose, my conscience for that very
reason commands me to repeat it in a manner that may
more effectually reach its end; or, should it seem to have
hindered that purpose,ybr that very reason to make good the
detriment and annihilate the untoward result. I will as I
ought, and the new deed follows. It may happen that the
consequences of this new action, in the world of sense, may
appear to me not more beneficial than those of the first;
but, with respect to the other world, I retain the same calm
assurance as before; and, in the present, it is again my
bounden duty to make good my previous failure by new ac- '*tion. And thus, should it still appear that, during my whole
earthly life, I have not advanced the good cause a single
hair's-breadth in this world, yet I dare not cease my efforts:
after every unsuccessful attempt, I must still believe that
the next will be successful. But in the spiritual world no
step is ever lost. In short, I do not pursue the earthly pur- . 1pose for its own sake alone, or as a final aim; but only be- \cause my true final aim, obedience to the law of conscience, does not present itself to me in this world in any other shape than as the advancement of this end. I may not
cease to pursue it, unless I were to deny the law of duty, or
unless that law were to manifest itself to me, in this life, in
some other shape than as a commandment to promote this
purpose in my own place;--I shall actually cease to pursue
it in another life in which that commandment shall have
set before me some other purpose wholly incomprehensible
to me here. In this life, I must will to promote it, because
I must obey; whether it be actually promoted by the deed
that follows my will thus fittingly directed is not my care;
I am responsible only for the will, but not for the result. C
Previous to the actual deed, I can never resign this purpose;
the deed, when it is completed, I may resign, and repeat it,
or improve it. Thus do I live and labour, even here, in my
most essential nature and in my nearest purposes, only for
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? 348
THE VOCATION OF MAN.
the other world; and my activity for it is the only thing of
which I am completely certain;--in the world of sense I
labour only for the sake of the other, and only because I
cannot work for the other without at least willing to work
for it.
I will establish myself firmly in this, to me, wholly new
view of my vocation. The present life cannot be rationally
regarded as the whole purpose of my existence, or of the
existence of a human race in general;--there is something
in me, and there is something required of me, which finds in
this life nothing to which it can be applied, and which is
entirely superfluous and unnecessary for the attainment of
the highest objects that can be attained on earth. There
must therefore be a purpose in human existence which lies
beyond this life. But should the present life, which ia
nevertheless imposed upon us, and which cannot be de-
signed solely for the development of reason, since even
awakened reason commands us to maintain it and to pro-
mote its highest purposes with all our powers,--should this
life not prove entirely vain and ineffectual, it must at least
have relation to a future life, as means to an end. Now
there is nothing in this present life, the ultimate conse-
quences of which do not remain on earth,--nothing where-
by we could be connected with a future life--but only our
virtuous will, which in this world, by the fundamental laws
thereof, is entirely fruitless. Only our virtuous will can it,
must it be, by which we can labour for another life, and for
the first and nearest objects which are there revealed to us;
and it is the consequences, invisible to us, of this virtuous will, through which we first acquire a firm standing-point in
that life from whence we may then advance in a farther
course of progress.
That our virtuous will in, and for and through itself, must
have consequences, we know already in this life, for reason
cannot command anything which is without a purpose; but
what these consequences may be,--nay, how it is even pos-
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? BOOK III. FAITH.
349
sible for a mere will to produce any effect at all,--as to this
we can form no conception whatever, so long as we are still
confined to this material world; and it is true wisdom not
to undertake an inquiry in which we know beforehand that
we shall be unsuccessful . With respect to the nature of
these consequences, the present life is therefore, in relation
to the future, aji/a^in^jgith^ In the future life, we shall possess these consequences, for we shall then proceed from
them as our starting-point, and build upon them as our
foundation; and this other life will thus be, in relation to
the consequences of our virtuous will in the present, a life --
m sight. In that other life, we shall also have an immediate
purpose set before us, as we have in the present; for our ac-
tivity must not cease. But we remain finite beings,--and
for finite beings there is but finite, determinate activity; and
every determinate act has a determinate end. As, in the
present life, the actually existing world as we findit around
us, the fitting adjustment of this world to the work we have
to do in it, the degree of culture and virtue already attained
by men, and our own physical powers,--as these stand rela-
ted to the purposes of this life,--so, in the future life, the consequences of our virtuous will in the present shall stand related to the purposes of that other existence. The present
is the commencement of our existence; the endowments re-
quisite for its purpose, and a firm footing in it, have been
freely bestowed on us:--the future is the continuation of
this existence, and in it we must acquire for ourselves a
commencement, and a definite standing-point.
And now the present life no longer appears vain and use-
less; for this and this alone it is given to us--that we may
acquire for ourselves a firm foundation in the future life,
and only by means of this foundation is it connected with
our whole external existence. It is very possible, that the
immediate purpose of this second life may prove as unat-
tainable by finite powers, with certainty and after a fixed
plan, as the purpose of the present life is now, and that even
there a virtuous will may apear superfluous and without
result . But it can never be lost there, any more than here,
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? 350
THE VOCATION OF MAN.
for it is the eternal and unalterable command of reason. Its
necessary efficacy would, in that case, direct us to a third
life, in which the consequences of our virtuous will in the
second life will become visible;--a life which during the
second life would again be believed in through faith, but
with firmer, more unwavering confidence, since we should
already have had practical experience of the truthfulness of
reason, and have regained the fruits of a pure heart which
had been faithfully garnered up in a previously completed
life.
As in the present life it is only from the command of con-
science to follow a certain course of action that there arises
our conception of a certain purpose in this action, and from
this our whole intuitive perception of a world of sense;--
so in the future, upon a similar, but now to us wholly in-
conceivable command, will be founded our conception of the
immediate purpose of that life; and upon this, again, our
intuitive perception of a world in which we shall set out
from the consequences of our virtuous will in the present
life. The present world exists for us only through the law
of duty; the other will be revealed to us, in a similar man-
ner, through another command of duty; for in no other
manner can a world exist for any reasonable being.
This, then, is my whole sublime vocation, my true nature.
I am a member of two orders:--the one purely spiritual, in
which I rule by my will alone; the other sensuous, in which
I operate by my deed. The whole end of reason is pure ac-
tivity, absolutely by itself alone, having no need of any in-
strument out of itself,--independence of everything which
is not reason,--absolute freedom. The will is the living
principle of reason,--is itself reason, when purely and simp-
ly apprehended; that reason is active by itself alone, means,
that pure will, merely as such, lives and rules. It is only
the Infinite Reason that lives immediately and wholly in
this purely spiritual order. The finite reason,--which does
not of itself constitute the world of reason, but is only one
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? BOOK XII. FAITH.
351
of its many members,--lives necessarily at the same time in a sensuous order; that is to say, in one which presents to it
another object beyond a purely spiritual activity:--a ma-
terial object, to be promoted by instruments and powers
which indeed stand under the immediate dominion of the
will, but whose activity is also conditioned by their own na-
tural laws. Yet as surely as reason is reason, must the will
operate absolutely by itself, and independently of the natu-
ral laws by which the material action is determined;--and
hence the sensuous life of every finite being points towards
a higher, into which the will, by itself alone, may open the
way, and of which it may acquire possession,--a possession
which indeed we must again sensuously conceive of as a
state, and not as a mere will.
These two orders,--the purely spiritual and the sensuous,
the latter consisting possibly of an innumerable series of
particular lives,--have existed since the first moment of
the development of an active reason within me, and still
proceed parallel to each other. The latter order is only a
phenomenon for myself, and for those with whom I am asso-
ciated in this life; the former alone gives it significance,
purpose, and value. I am immortal, imperishable, eternal,
as soon as I form the resolution to obey the laws of reason;
I do not need to become so. The super-sensual world is no
future world; it is now present; it can at no point of finite
existence be more present than at another; not more pre-
sent aftej>an existence of myriads of lives than at this mo-
ment. My sensuous existence may, in future, assume other
forms, but these are just as little the true life, as its pre-
sent form. By that rcs|ution I lay hold on eternity, and
cast off this earthly life and all other forms of sensuous life
which may yet lie before me in futurity, and place myself
far above them. I become the sole source of my own being
and its phenomena, and, henceforth, unconditioned by any-
thing without me, I have life in myself. My will, which is
directed by no foreign agency in the order of the super-sen-
sual world, but by myself alone, is this source of true life,
and of eternity.
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? 352
THE VOCATION OF MAN.
It is my will alone which is this source of true life, and
i if eternity;--only by recognising this will as the peculiar
seat of moral goodness, and by actually raising it thereto,
do I obtain the assurance and the possession of that super-
sensual world.
Without regard to any conceivable or visible object, with-
out inquiry as to whether my will may be followed by any
result other than the mere volition,--I must will in accor-
dance with the ,m/>ro]JaWr My will stands alone, apart
from all that is not itself, and is its own world merely by it-
self and for itself; not only as being itself an absolutely
first, primary and original power, before which there is no
preceding influence by which it may be governed, but also
as being followed by no conceivable or comprehensible second
step in the series, coming after it, by which its activity may
be brought under the dominion of a foreign law. Did there
proceed from it any second, and from this again a third re-
sult, and so forth, in any conceivable sensuous world oppos-
ed to the spiritual world, then would its strength be broken
by the resistance it would encounter from the independent
elements of such a world which it would set in motion; the
mode of its activity would no longer exactly correspond to
the purpose expressed in the volition; and the will would
no longer remain free, but be partly limited by the peculiar
laws of its heterogeneous sphere of action. And thus must
I actually regard the will in the present sensous world, the
only one known to me. I am indeed compelled to believe,
and consequently to act as if I thought, that by my mere
volition, my tongue, my hand, or my foot, might be set in
motion; but how a mere aspiration, an impress of intelli-
gence upon itself, such as will is, can be the principle of
motion to a heavy material mass,--this I not only find it
impossible to conceive, but the mere assertion is, before the
tribunal of the understanding, a palpable absurdity;--here
the movement of matter even in myself can be explained
only by the internal forces of matter itself.
Such a view of my will as I have taken, can, however, be
attained only through an intimate conviction that it is not
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? BOOK III. FAITH.
353
merely the highest active principle for this world,--which it
certainly might be, without having freedom in itself, by the
mere influence of the system of the universe, perchance, as
we must conceive of a formative power in Nature,--but
that it absolutely disregards all earthly objects, and generally
all objects lying out of itself, and recognises itself, for its
own sake, as its own ultimate end. But by such a view of
my will I am at once directed to a super-sensual order of
things, in which the will, by itself alone and without any
instrument lying out of itself, becomes an efficient cause
in a sphere which, like itself, is purely spiritual, and is
thoroughly accessible to it. That moral volition is demand-
ed of us absolutely for its own sake alone,--a truth which
I discover only as a fact in my inward consciousness, and to
the knowledge of which I cannot attain in any other way:
--this was the first step of my thought. That this demand
is reasonable, and the source and standard of all else that is
reasonable; that it is not modelled upon any other thing
whatever, but that all other things must, on the contrary,
model themselves upon it, and be dependent upon it,--a con-
viction which also I cannot arrive at from without, but can
attain only by inward experience, by means of the unhesitat-
ing and immovable assent which I freely accord to this de-
mand:--this was the second step of my thought . And from
these two terms I have attained to faith in a super-sensual
Eternal World. If I abandon the former, the latter falls to
the ground. If it were true,--as many say it is, assuming it
without farther proof as self-evident and extolling it as the
highest summit of human wisdom,--that all human virtue
must have before it a certain definite external object, and
that it must first be assured of the possibility of attaining
this object, before it can act and before it can become vir-
tue; that, consequently, reason by no means contains within
itself the principle and the standard of its own activity, but
must receive this standard from without, through contem-
plation of an external world;--if this were true, then might
the ultimate end of our existence be accomplished here
below; human nature might be completely developed and
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? 354
THE VOCATION OF MAN.
exhausted by our earthly vocation, and we should have no
rational ground for raising our thoughts above the present
life.
But every thinker who has anywhere acquired those first
principles even historically, moved perhaps by a mere love
of the new and unusual, and who is able to prosecute a
correct course of reasoning from them, might speak and
teach as I have now spoken to myself. He would then
present us with the thoughts of some other being, not with
his own; everything would float before him empty and
without significance, because he would be without the sense
whereby he might apprehend its reality. He is a blind
man, who, upon certain true principles concerning colours
which he has learned historically, has built a perfectly cor-
rect theory of colour, notwithstanding that there is in reality
no colour existing for him;--he can tell how, under certain
conditions, it must be; but to him it is not so, because he
does not stand under these conditions. The faculty by
which we lay hold on Eternal Life is to be attained only by
^actually renouncing the sensuous and its objects, and sacri-
ficing them to that law which takes cognizance of our will
only and not of our actions;--renouncing them with the
firmest conviction that it is reasonable for us to do so,--nay,
that it is the only thing reasonable for us, By this renun-
ciation of the Earthly, does faith in the Eternal first arise
in our soul, and is there enshrined apart, as the only sup-
port to which we can cling after we have given up all else,
--as the only animating principle that can elevate our
minds and inspire our lives. We must indeed, according to
the figure of a sacred doctrine, first "die unto the world and
be born again, before we can enter the kingdom of God. "
I see--Oh I now see clearly before me the cause of
my former indifference and blindness concerning spiritual
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? BOOK III. FAITH.
355
things! Absorbed by mere earthly objects, lost in them
with all our thoughts and efforts, moved and urged onward
only by the notion of a result lying beyond ourselves,--by
the desire of such a result and of our enjoyment therein,--
insensible and dead to the pure impulse of reason, which
gives a law to itself, and offers to our aspirations a purely
spiritual end,--the immortal Psyche remains, with fettered
pinions, fastened to the earth. Our philosophy becomes
the history of our own heart and life; and according to
what we ourselves are, do we conceive of man and his voca-
tion. Never impelled by any other motive than the desire
after what can be actually realized in this world, there is for
us no true freedom,--no freedom which holds the ground of
its determination absolutely and entirely within itself. Our
freedom is, at best, that of the self-forming plant; not es-
sentially higher in its nature, but only more artistical in its
results; not producing a mere material form with roots,
leaves, and blossoms, but a mind with impulses, thoughts,
and actions.
We cannot have the slightest conception of
true freedom, because we do not ourselves possess it; when
it is spoken of, we either bring down what is said to the
level of our own notions, or at once declare all such talk to
be nonsense. Without the idea of freedom, we are likewise
without the faculty for another world. Everything of this
kind floats past before us like words that are not addressed
to us; like a pale shadow, without colour or meaning, which
we know not how to lay hold of or retain. We leave it as
we find it, without the least participation or sympathy. Or
should we ever be urged by a more active zeal to consider
it seriously, we then convince ourselves to our own satisfac-
tion that all such ideas are untenable and worthless re-
veries, which the man of sound understanding unhesitating-
ly rejects; and according to the premises from which we
proceed, made up as they are of our inward experiences, we
are perfectly in the right, and secure from either refutation
or conversion so long as we remain what we are. The ex-
cellent doctrines which are taught amongst us with a special
authority, concerning freedom, duty, and everlasting life,
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? 35G
THE VOCATION OF MAN.
become to us romantic fables, like those of Tartarus and the
Elysian fields; although we do not publish to the world
this our secret opinion, because we find it expedient, by
means of these figures, to maintain an outward decorum
among the populace; or, should we be less reflective, and
ourselves bound in the chains of authority, then we sink to
the level of the common mind, and believing what, thus
understood, would be mere foolish fables, we find in those
pure spiritual symbols only the promise of continuing
throughout eternity the same miserable existence which we
possess here below.
In one word :--only by the fundamental improvement of
my will does a new light arise within me concerning my
existence and vocation; without this, however much I may
speculate, and with what rare intellectual gifts soever I may
be endowed, darkness remains within me and around me.
The improvement of the heart alone leads to true wisdom.
Let then my whole life be unceasingly devoted to this one purpose.
IV.
My Moral Will, merely as such, in and through itself, shall
certainly and invariably produce consequences; every deter-
mination of my will in accordance with duty, although no
action should follow it, shall operate in another, to me in-
comprehensible, world, in which nothing but this moral
determination of the will shall possess efficient activity.
What is it that is assumed in this conception?
Obviously a Law; a rule absolutely without exception,
according to which a will determined by duty must have
consequences; just as in the material world which sur-
rounds me I assume a law according to which this ball,
when thrown by my hand with this particular force, in this
particular direction, necessarily moves in such a direction
with a certain degree of velocity,--perhaps strikes another
ball with a certain amount of force, which in its turn moves
on with a certain velocity,--and so on. As here, in the
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? BOOK III. FAITH.
357
mere direction and motion of my hand, I already perceive
and apprehend all the consequent directions and move-
ments, with the same certainty as if they were already
present before me; even so do I embrace by means of my vir-
tuous will a series of necessary and inevitable consequences
in the spiritual world, as if they were already present be-
fore me; only that I cannot define them as I do those in
the material world,--that is, I only know that they must be,
but not how they shall be;--and even in doing this, I con-
ceive of a Law of the spiritual world, in which my pure will
is one of the moving forces, as my hand is one of the moving
forces of the material world. My own firm confidence in
these results, and the conceptions of this Law of the spiri-
tual world, are one and the same;--they are not two
thoughts, one of which arises by means of the other, but
they are entirely the same thought; just as the confidence
with which I calculate on a certain motion in a material
body, and the conception of a mechanical law of nature on
which that motion depends, are one and the same. The
conception of a Law expresses nothing more than the firm,
immovable confidence of reason in a principle, and the ab-
solute impossibility of admitting its opposite.
I assume such a law of a spiritual world,--not given by
my will nor by the will of any finite being, nor by the will
of all finite beings taken together, but to which my will, and
the will of all finite beings, is subject. Neither I, nor any fi-
nite and therefore sensuous being, can conceive how a mere
will can have consequences, nor what may be the true nature
of those consequences; for herein consists the essential cha-
racter of our finite nature,--that we are unable to conceive
this,--that having indeed our will, as such, wholly within
our power, we are yet compelled by our sensuous nature to
regard the consequences of that will as sensuous states:--
how then can I, or any other finite being whatever, propose
to ourselves as objects, and thereby give reality to, that
which we can neither imagine nor conceive? I cannot say
that, in the material world, my hand, or any other body
which belongs to that world and is subject to the universal
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? 358
THE VOCATION OF MAN.
law of gravity, brings this law into operation;--these bodies
themselves stand under this law, and are able to set another
body in motion only in accordance with this law, and only
in so far as that body, by virtue of this law, partakes of the
universal moving power of Nature. Just as little can a
finite will give a law to the super-sensual world, which no
finite spirit can embrace; but all finite wills stand under
the law of that world, and can produce results therein only
inasmuch as that law already exists, and inasmuch as they
themselves, in accordance with the form of that law which
is applicable to finite wills, bring themselves under its con-
ditions, and within the sphere of its activity, by moral obe-
dience;--by moral obedience, I say, the only tie which unites
them to that higher world, the only nerve that descends from
it to them, and the only organ through which they can re-act
upon it. As the universal power of attraction embraces all
bodies, and holds them together in themselves and with each
other, and the movement of each separate body is possible
only on the supposition of this power, so does that super-sen-
sual law unite, hold together, and embrace all finite reason-
able beings. My will, and the will of all finite beings, may
be regarded from a double point of view :--partly as a mere
volition, an internal act directed upon itself alone, and, in so
far, the will is complete in itself, concluded in this act of vo-
lition ;--partly as something beyond this, a fact. It assumes
the latter form to me, as soon as I regard it as completed;
but it must also become so beyond me:--in the world of
sense, as the moving principle, for instance, of my hand, from
the movement of which, again, other movements follow;--in
the super-sensual world, as the principle of a series of spiri-
tual consequences of which I have no conception. In the
former point of view, as a mere act of volition, it stands wholly
within my own power; its assumption of the latter charac-
ter, that of an active first principle, depends not upon me,
but on a law to which I myself am subject;--on the law of
nature in the world of sense, on a super-sensual law in the world of pure thought.
What, then, is this law of the spiritual world which I con-
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? BOOK III. FAITH.
359
ceive? This idea now stands before me, in fixed and per-
fect shape; I cannot, and dare not add anything whatever
to it; I have only to express and interpret it distinctly. It
is obviously not such as I may suppose the principle of my
own, or any other possible sensuous world, to be,--a fixed,
inert existence, from which, by the encounter of a will, some
internal power may be evolved,--something altogether dif-
ferent from a mere will. For,--and this is the substance of
my belief,--my will, absolutely by itself, and without the
intervention of any instrument that might weaken its ex-
pression, shall act in a perfectly congenial sphere,--reason
upon reason, spirit upon spirit;--in a sphere to which
nevertheless it does not give the law of life, activity, and
progress, but which has that law in itself;--therefore, upon
self-active reason. But self-active reason is will. The law
of the super-sensual world must, therefore, be a Will:--A
Will which operates purely as will; by itself, and absolutely
without any instrument or sensible material of its activity;
which is, at the same time, both act and product; with
whom to will is to do, to command is to execute; in which
therefore the instinctive demand of reason for absolute free-
dom and independence is realized:--A Will, which in itself
is law; determined by no fancy or caprice, through no pre-
vious reflection, hesitation or doubt:--but eternal, un-
changeable, on which we may securely and infallibly rely, as
the physical man relies with certainty on the laws of his
world:--A Will in which the moral will of finite beings, and
this alone, has sure and unfailing results; since for it all
else is unavailing, all else is as if it were not.
That sublime Will thus pursues no solitary path with-
drawn from the other parts of the world of reason. There
is a spiritual bond between Him and all finite rational be-
ings; and He himself is this spiritual bond of the rational
universe. Let me will, purely and decidedly, my duty; and
He wills that, in the spiritual world at least, my will shall
prosper. Every moral resolution of a finite being goes up
before Him, and--to speak after the manner of mortals--
moves and determines Him, not in consequence of a mo-
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? 360
THE VOCATION OF MAN.
mentary satisfaction, but in accordance with the eternal law
of His being. With surprising clearness does this thought,
which hitherto was surrounded with darkness, now reveal
itself to my soul; the thought that my will, merely as such,
and through itself, shall have results. It has results, because
it is immediately and infallibly perceived by another Will
to which it is related, which is its own accomplishment and
the only living principle of the spiritual world; in Him it
has its first results, and through Him it acquires an in-
fluence on the whole spiritual world, which throughout is
but a product of that Infinite Will. Thus do I approach--the mortal must speak in his own
language--thus do I approach that Infinite Will; and the
voice of conscience in my soul, which teaches me in every
situation of life what I have there to do, is the channel
through which again His influence descends upon me. That
voice, sensualized by my environment, and translated into
my language, is the oracle of the Eternal World which an-
nounces to me how I am to perform my part in the order of
the spiritual universe, or in the Infinite Will who is Him-
self that order. I cannot, indeed, survey or comprehend
that spiritual order, and I need not to do so;--I am but a
link in its chain, and can no more judge of the whole, than
a single tone of music can judge of the entire harmony of
which it forms a part. But what I myself ought to be in
this harmony of spirits I must know, for it is only I myself
who can make me so,--and this is immediately revealed to
me by a voice whose tones descend upon me from that other
world. Thus do I stand connected with the One who alone
has existence, and thus do I participate in His being.
There is nothing real, lasting, imperishable me, but these
two elements:--the voice of conscience,_ajnd,jnjr_ft^e_Qbe-dience. Byjthe first, thespiritual world bows down to me,
and embraces me as one of its members; by the_secondJL
raise myself into this world, ,ipprphf-nd it,, and rt>>->y. t, ypon
it. That Infinite Will is the mediator between Jit _and-
'me; for He himself is the original source both of it and me. This is the one True and Imperishable for which my
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-27 00:11 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89090378035 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? BOOK III. FAITH.
3G1
Will yogrr<? oYftn frnrv its inmost depths; all else is meie.
appep^anofj wuuahiag, and ovor i"of"''n'r'^ in_a_new_
semblance. _
This Will unites me with himself; He also unites me
with all finite beings like myself, and is the common media-
tor between us all. This is the great mystery of the in-
visible world, and its fundamental law, in so far as it is a
world or system of many individual wills:--the union, and
direct reciprocal action, of many separate and independent
wills; a mystery which already lies clearly before every eye
in the present life, without attracting the notice of any one,
or being regarded as in any way wonderful. The voice of
conscience, which imposes on each his particular duty, is the
light-beam on which we come forth from the bosom of the
Infinite, and assume our place as particular individual be-
ings; it fixes the limits of our personality; it is thus the
true original element of our nature, the foundation and ma-
terial of all our life. The absolute freedom 'of tlm wjjlj.
whinh wp bring rlnwn with_ us. from the Infinite into the
wnrlfl nf Tirr)^, is the principle of this our life. I act:--and,
the sensible intuition through which alone I become a per-
sonal intelligence being supposed, it is easy to conceive how
I must necessarily know of this my action,--I know it, be-
cause it is I myself who act;--it is easy to conceive how, by
means of this sensible intuition, my spiritual act appears to
me as a fact in a world of sense; and how, on the other
hand, by the same sensualization, the law of duty which, in
itself, is a purely spiritual law, should appear to me as the
command to such an action ;--it is easy to conceive, how an
actually present world should appear to me as the condition
of this action, and, in part, as the consequence and product
of it. Thus far I remain within myself and upon my own
territory; everything here, which has an existence for me,
unfolds itself purely and solely from myself; I see every-
where only myself, and no true existence out of myself. But
in this my world I admit, also, the operations of other be-
ings, separate and independent of me, as much as I of them.
Ab
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? 362
THE VOCATION OF MAN.
How these beings can themselves know of the influences
which proceed from them, may easily be conceived; they
know of them in the same way in which I know of my own.
But how / can know of them is absolutely inconceivable;
just as it is inconceivable how they can possess that know-
ledge of my existence, and its manifestations, which never-
theless I ascribe to them. How do they come within my
world, or I within theirs,--since the principle by which the
consciousness of ourselves, of our operations, and of their
sensuous conditions, is deduced from ourselves,--i. e. that
each individual must undoubtedly know what he himself
does,--is here wholly inapplicable? How have free spirits
knowledge of free spirits, since we know that free spirits are
the only reality, and that an independent world of sense,
through which they might act on each other, is no longer to
be taken into account. Or shall it be said,--I perceive reason-
able beings like myself by the changes which they produce
in the world of sense? Then I ask again,--How dost thou
perceive these changes? I comprehend very well how thou
canst perceive changes which are brought about by the
mere mechanism of nature; for the law of this mechanism
is no other than the law of thy own thought, according to
which, this world being once assumed, it is carried out into
farther developments. But the changes of which we now
speak are not brought about by the 'mere mechanism of na-
ture, but by a free will elevated above all nature; and only
in so far as thou canst regard them in this character, canst
thou infer from them the existence of free beings like thy-
self. Where then is the law within thyself, according to
which thou canst realize the determinations of other wills
absolutely independent of thee? In short, this mutual
recognition and reciprocal action of free beings in this
world, is perfectly inexplicable by the laws of nature or of
thought, and can be explained only through the One in whom
they are united, although to each other they are separate;
through the Infinite Will who sustains and embraces them
all in His own sphere. Not immediately from thee to me,
nor from me to thee, flows forth the knowledge which we
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? BOOK III. FAITH.
363
have of each other;--we are separated by an insurmount-
able barrier. Only through the common fountain of our
spiritual being do we know of each other; only in Him do
we recognise each other, and influence each other. "Here
reverence the image of freedom upon the earth;--here, a
work which bears its impress :"--thus is it proclaimed with-
in me by the voice of that Will, which speaks to me only in
so far as it imposes duties upon me;--and the only prin-
ciple through which I recognise thee and thy work, is the
command of conscience to respect them.
Whence, then, our feelings, our sensible intuitions, our dis-
cursive laws of thought, on all which is founded the exter-
nal world which we behold, in which we believe that we ex-
ert an influence on each other? With respect to the two
last--our sensible intuitions and our laws of thought--to
say, these are laws of reason in itself, is only to give no sa-
tisfactory answer at all. For us, indeed, who are excluded
from the pure domain of reason in itself, it may be impos-
sible to think otherwise, or to conceive of reason under any
other law. But the true law of reason in itself is the practical law, the law of the super-sensual world, or of that sub-1lime WilL And, leaving this for a moment undecided, whence
comes our universal agreement as to feelings, which, never-
theless, are something positive, immediate, inexplicable 1
On this agreement in feeling, perception, and in the laws of
thought, however, it depends that we all behold the same
external world.
"It is a harmonious, although inconceivable, limitation of
the finite rational beings who compose our race; and only
by means of such a harmonious limitation do they become a
race:"--thus answers the philosophy of mere knowledge,
and here it must rest as its highest point. But what can
set a limit to reason but reason itself 1--what can limit all
finite reason but the Infinite Reason? This universal agree-
ment concerning a sensible world,--assumed and accepted
by us as the foundation of all our other life, and as the
sphere of our duty--which, strictly considered, is just as in-
comprehensible as our unanimity concerning the products of
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? 3G4
THE VOCATION OF MAN.
our reciprocal freedom,--this agreement is the result of the
One Eternal Infinite WilL Our faith, of which we have
spoken as faith in duty, is only faith in Him, in His reason,
in His truth. What, then, is the peculiar and essential
truth which we accept in the world of sense, and in which
we believe? Nothing less than that from our free and faith-
ful performance of our duty in this world, there will arise to
us throughout eternity a life in which our freedom and mo-
rality may still continue their development. If this be true,
then indeed is there truth in our world, and the only truth
possible for finite beings; and it must be true, for this world
is the result of the Eternal Will in us,--and that Will, by
the law of His own being, can have no other purpose with
respect to finite beings, than that which we have set forth.
That Eternal Will is thus assuredly the Creator of the
World, in the only way in which He can be so, and in the
only way in which it needs creation:--in the finite reason.
Those who regard Him as building up a world from an
everlasting inert matter, which must still remain inert and
lifeless,--like a vessel made by human hands, not an eternal
procession of His self-development,--or who ascribe to Him
the production of a material universe out of nothing, know
neither the world nor Him. If matter only can be reality,
then were the world indeed nothing, and throughout all eter-
nity would remain nothing. Reason alone exists:--the In-
finite in Himself,--the finite in Him and through Him.
Only in our minds has He created a world; at least that
from which we unfold it, and that by which we unfold it;--
the voice of duty, and harmonious feelings, intuitions, and
laws of thought. It is His light through which we behold
the light, and all that it reveals to us. In our minds He
still creates this world, and acts upon it by acting upon our
minds through the call of duty, as soon as another free be-
ing changes aught therein. In our minds He upholds this
world, and thereby the finite existence of which alone we
are capable, by continually evolving from each state of our
existence other states in succession. When He shall have
sufficiently proved us according to His supreme designs, for
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? BOOK III. FAITH.
365
our next succeeding vocation, and we shall have sufficiently cultivated ourselves for entering upon it, then, by that I
which we call death, will He annihilate for us this life, and introduce us to a new life, the product of our virtuous ac-1tions. All our life is His life. We are in His hand, and abide therein, and no one can pluck us out of His hand. We are eternal, because He is eternal. ^
Sublime and Living Will! named by no name, compassed
by no thought! I may well raise my soul to Thee, for Thou and I are not divided. Thy voice sounds within me, mine
resounds in Thee; and all my thoughts, if they be but good
and true, live in Thee also. In Thee, the Incomprehensible,
I myself, and the world in which I live, become clearly com-
prehensible to me; all the secrets of my existence are laid
open, and perfect harmony arises in my soul.
Thou art best known to the child-like, devoted, simple
mind. . To it Thou art the searcher of hearts, who seest its
inmost depths; the ever-present true witness of its thoughts,
who knowest its truth, who knowest it though all the world
know it not. Thou art the Father who ever desirest its
good, who rulest all things for the best. To Thy will it un-
hesitatingly resigns itself: "Do with me," it says, "what
thou wilt; I know that it is good, for it is Thou who doest
it. " The inquisitive understanding, which has heard of
Thee, but seen Thee not, would teach us thy nature; and,
as Thy image, shows us a monstrous and incongruous
shape, which the sagacious laugh at, and the wise and good
abhor.
I hide my face before Thee, and lay my hand upon my
mouth.
