tions of the independent power which falls to my share as an individual; as restrained and limited, when, by any combination of outward circumstances, which may arise in time, but do not lie within the original limi tations of my personality, I cannot do what my in- BOOK I. DOUBT. 389 dividual power would naturally, if unobstructed, be capable of doing; as compelled, when this individual power, by the superiority of antagonist powers, is compelled to manifest itself even in opposition to its own laws.
Bestow consciousness on a tree, and let it grow, spread out its branches, and bring forth leaves and buds, blossoms and fruits, after its kind, without hin drance or obstruction: — it will perceive no limitation to its existence hi being only a tree, and a tree of this particular species, and this particular individual of the species; it will feel itself perfectly free, because, in all those manifestations, it will do nothing but what its nature requires; and it will desire to do nothing else, because it can only desire what that nature requires. But let its growth be hindered by unfavourable weather, want of nourishment, or other causes, and it will feel itself limited and restrained, because an impulse which actually belongs to its nature is not satisfied. Bind its free waving boughs to a wall, force foreign branches on it by ingrafting, and it will feel itself compelled to one course of action; its branches will grow, but not in the direction they would have taken if left to them selves; it will produce fruits, but not those which its own nature demands. In immediate consciousness, I appear to myself as free; by reflection on the whole of Nature, I discover that freedom is absolutely im possible; the former must be subordinate to the latter, for it can only be explained by means of it.
What high satisfaction do I enjoy through the sys tem which my understanding has thus completed!
M m 390 THE VOCATION OF MAN.
What order, what firm connexion, what comprehensive supervision does it introduce into the whole fabric of my knowledge! Consciousness is here no longer that stranger in Nature, whose connexion with existence is so incomprehensible; it is native to it, and indeed one of its necessary manifestations. Nature rises graduaUy in the fixed series of her productions. In rude matter she is a simple existence; in organized matter she re turns within herself to internal activity; in the plant, to produce form; in the animal, motion; — in man, as her highest masterpiece, she turns inwards that she may perceive and contemplate herself; in him she, as it were, doubles herself, and, from being mere existence, becomes existence and consciousness in one.
How I am and must be conscious of my own being and of its determinations, is, in this connexion, easily perceived. My being and my knowledge have one common foundation, — my own nature. The Living being within me, even because it is mine, is conscious of itself. Quite as conceivable is my consciousness of corporeal objects existing beyond myself. The powers in whose manifestation my personality consists, — the formative — the self-moving — the thinking powers, — are not these same powers as they exist in Nature at large, but only a certain definite portion of them; and that they are but such a portion, is because there are so many other existences beyond me. From the former, I can infer the latter; from the limitation, the power which limits. Because I myself am not this or that, which yet belongs to the connected system of existence, it must exist beyond me; — thus reasons the thinking principle within me. Of my own limitation, I am immediately conscious, because it is a part of my self, and only by reason of it do I possess an actual BOOK I. DOUBT. 391 existence; my consciousness of the source of this limi tation, — of that which I myself am not, — is produced by the former, and arises out of it.
Away, then, with those pretended influences and operations of outward things upon me, by means of which they are supposed to pour in upon me a know ledge which is not in themselves and cannot flow forth from them. The ground upon which I assume the existence of something beyond myself, does not he out of myself, but within me, in the limitation of my own personality. By means of this limitation, the thinking principle of Mature within me proceeds out of itself, and is able to survey itself as a whole, although, in each individual, from a different point of view.
In the same way there arises within me the idea of other thinking beings like myself. I, or the thinking power of Nature within me, possess some thoughts which seem to have developed themselves within myself as a particular form of Nature; and others, which seem not to have so developed themselves. And so it is in reality. The former are my own, peculiar, individual contribution to the general circle of thought in Nature; the latter are deduced from them, as what must surely have a place in that circle; but, being only inferences so far as I am concerned, must find that place, not in me, but in other thinking beings: — hence I conclude that there are other thinking beings besides myself. In short, Nature, in me, becomes conscious of herself as a whole, but only by beginning with my own indivi dual consciousness, and proceeding from thence to the consciousness of universal being by inference founded on the principle of causality; — that is, she is conscious of the conditions under which alone such a form, such 392 THE VOCATION OF MAN.
a motion, such a thought as that in which my person ality consists, is possible. The principle of causality is the point of transition, from the particular within my self, to the universal which lies beyond myself; and the distinguishing characteristic of these two kinds of knowledge is this, that the one is immediate percep tion, while the other is inference.
In each individual, Nature beholds herself from a particular point of view. I call myself — 7, and thee — thou; thou callest thyself — /, and me — tliou; I lie beyond thee, as thou beyond me. Of what is without me, I comprehend first those things which touch me most nearly; thou, those which touch thee most nearly; — from these points we each proceed onwards to the next proximate; but we describe very different paths, which may here and there intersect each other, but never run parallel. There is an infinite variety of possible individuals, and hence also an infinite variety of possible starting points of consciousness. This con sciousness of all individuals taken together, constitutes the complete consciousness of the universe; and there is no other, for only in the individual is there perfect precision and reality.
The testimony of consciousness in every individual is altogether sure and trustworthy, if it be indeed the consciousness here described; for this consciousness developes itself out of the whole prescribed course of Nature. Nature, however, cannot contradict herself; wherever there is a conception, there must be a corre sponding existence, for conceptions are only produced simultaneously with the production of the correspond ing realities. To each individual his own particular con sciousness is wholly determined, for it proceeds from BOOK I. DOUBT. 393 his own nature: — no one can have other conceptions, or a greater or less degree of vitality in these concep tions, than he actually has. The substance of his con ceptions is determined by the position which he assumes in the universe; their clearness and vitality, by the higher or lower degree of efficiency manifested by the power of humanity in his person. Give to Nature the determination of one single element of a person, let it seem to be ever so trivial, — the course of a muscle, the turn of a hair, — and she could tell thee, had she a uni versal consciousness, and were able to reply to thee, all the thoughts which could belong to this person during the whole period of his conscious existence.
In this system also, the phenomenon of our con sciousness which we call Will, becomes thoroughly in telligible. A volition is the immediate consciousness of the activity of any of the powers of Nature within us. The immediate consciousness of an effort, — an aspiration of these powers which has not yet become a reality because it is hemmed in by opposing powers, — is, in consciousness, inclination or desire; the struggle of contending powers is irresolution; the victory of one is the determination of the Will. If the power which strives after activity be only that which we have in common with the plant or the animal, there arises a division and degradation of our inward being; the desire is unworthy of our rank in the order of things, and, according to a common use of language, may be called a low one. If this striving power be the whole undivided force of humanity, then is the de sire worthy of our nature, and it may be caUed a higher one. The latter effort, considered absolutely, may be called a moral law. The activity of this latter M m 2 394 THE VOCATION OF MAN.
is a virtuous Will, and the course of action resulting from it is virtue. The triumph of the former unasso- ciated with the latter is vice; such a triumph over the latter, and despite its opposition, is crime.
The power which, on each individual occasion, proves triumphant, triumphs of necessity; its superiority is determined by the whole connexion of the universe; and hence by the same connexion is the vice or crime of each individual irrevocably determined. Give to Nature, once more, the course of a muscle, the turn of a hair, in any particular individual, and had she the power of universal thought, and could answer thee, she would be able to declare all the good and evil deeds of his life from the beginning to the end of it. But still virtue does not cease to be virtue, nor vice to be vice. The virtuous man is a noble product of nature; the vicious, an ignoble and contemptible one: — although both are necessary results of the connected system of the universe.
Repentance is the consciousness of the continued effort of humanity within me, even after it has been overcome, associated with the disagreeable sense of having been subdued; a disquieting but still precious pledge of our nobler nature. From this consciousness of the fundamental impulse of our nature, arises the sense which has been called ' conscience,' and its greater or less strictness and susceptibility, down to the abso lute want of it, in many individuals. The ignoble man is incapable of repentance, for in him humanity has at no tune sufficient strength to contend with lower im pulses. Reward and punishment are the natural con sequences of virtue and vice for the production of new virtue and new vice. By frequent and important vie- BOOK I. DOUBT. 395 tories, our peculiar power is extended and strengthened; by inaction or frequent defeat, it becomes ever weaker and weaker. The ideas of guilt and accountability have no meaning but in external legislation. He only has incurred guilt, and must render an account of his crime, who compels society to employ artificial external force in order to restrain in him the activity of those impulses which are injurious to the general welfare.
My inquiry is closed, and my desire of knowledge satisfied. I know what I am, and wherein the nature of my species consists. I am a manifestation, deter mined by the whole system of the universe, of a power of Nature which is determined by itself. To under stand thoroughly my particular personal being in its deepest sources is impossible, for I cannot penetrate into the innermost recesses of Nature. But I am im mediately conscious of this my personal existence. I know right well what I am at the present moment; I can for the most part remember what I have been formerly; and I shall learn what I shall be, when what is now future shall become present experience.
I cannot indeed make use of this discovery in the regulation of my actions, for I do not truly act at all, but Nature acts in me; and to make myself something else than that for which Nature has intended me, is what I cannot even propose to myself, for I am not the author of my own being, but Nature has made me myself, and all that I am. I may repent, and rejoice, and form good resolutions; — although, strictly speak ing, I cannot even do this, for all these things come to me of themselves, when it is appointed for them to 396 THE VOCATION OF MAN.
do so; — but most certainly I cannot, by all my repent ance, and by all my resolutions, produce the smallest change in that which I must once for all inevitably become. I stand under the inexorable power of rigid Necessity: — should she have destined me to become a fool and a profligate, a fool and a profligate without doubt I shall become; should she have destined me to be wise and good, wise and good I shall doubtless be. There is neither blame nor merit to her nor to me. She stands under her own laws, I under hers. I see this, and feel that my tranquillity would be best en sured by subjecting my wishes also to that Necessity to which my being is wholly subject.
Oh these opposing wishes! For why should I any longer hide from myself the sadness, the horror, the amazement with which I was penetrated when I saw how my inquiry must end? I had solemnly promised myself that my inclinations should have no influence in the direction of my thoughts; and I have not know ingly allowed them any such influence. But may I not at last confess that this result contradicts the pro- foundest aspirations, wishes, and wants of my being? And, despite of the accuracy and the decisive strictness of the proofs by which it seems to be supported, how can I truly believe in a theory of my being which strikes at the very root of that being, which so distinctly contradicts all the purposes for wliich alone I live and without which I should loathe my existence?
"Why must my heart mourn at, and be lacerated by, that which so perfectly satisfies my understanding? While nothing in Nature contradicts itself, is man alone BOOK I. DOUBT. 397 a contradiction? Or perhaps not man in general, but only me and those who resemble me? Had I but been contented to remain amid the pleasant delusions that surrounded me, satisfied with the immediate conscious ness of my existence, and never raised those questions concerning its foundation, the answer to which has caused me this misery! But if this answer be true, then / must of necessity have raised these questions: — I indeed raised them not, but the thinking nature within me raised them. I was destined to this misery, and I weep in vain the lost innocence of soul which can never return to me again.
But courage! Let all else be lost, so that this at least remains! Merely for the sake of my wishes, did they lie ever so deep or seem ever so sacred, I can not renounce what rests on incontrovertible evidence. But perhaps I may have erred in my investigation; —perhaps I may have only partially comprehended and understood the grounds upon which I had to pro ceed. I ought to repeat the inquiry again from the opposite side, in order that I may at least possess a correct starting point. What is it, then, that I find so repugnant, so painful, in the decision to which I have come? What is it, which I desired to find in its place? Let me before all things make clear to myself what are these inclinations to which I appeal.
That I should be destined to be wise and good, or foolish and profligate, without power to change this destiny in aught, — in the former case having no merit, and in the latter incurring no guilt, — this it was that filled me with amazement and horror. The reference 398 THE VOCATION OF MAN.
of my being, and of all the determinations of my being, to a cause out of 'myself, — the manifestations of which were again determined by other causes external to itself, — this it was from which I so violently recoiled. The freedom which was not mine, but that of a foreign power without me, and even in that, only a limited, half freedom, — this it was which did not satisfy me. I myself, — that of which I am conscious as my own being and person, but which in this system appears only as the manifestation of a higher existence, — this "I" would be independent, — would be something, not by another or through another, but of myself, — and, as such, would be the final root of all my own determina tions. The rank which in this system is assumed by an original power of Nature I would myself assume, with this difference, that the modes of my manifesta tions shall not be determined by any foreign power. I desire to possess an inward and peculiar power of mani fold, infinite modes of manifestation, like those powers of Nature, and this power shall manifest itself in the particular way in which it does manifest itself, for no other reason than because it does so manifest itself; not, like these powers of Nature, because it is placed under such or such outward conditions.
What then, according to my wish, shall be the especial seat and centre of this peculiar inward power? Evidently not my body, for that I willingly allow to pass for a manifestation of the powers of Nature, — at least so far as its constitution is concerned, if not with regard to its farther determinations; not my sensual inclinations, for these I regard as a relation of those powers to my consciousness. Hence it must be my thought and will. I would exercise my voluntary power BOOK I. DOUBT. 399 BOOK I. DOUBT. 399 freely, for the accomplishment of aims which I shall have freely adopted; and this will, as its own ultimate ground which can be determined by no higher, shall move and mould, first my own body, and through it the surrounding world. My active powers shall be under the control of my will alone, and shall be set in motion by nothing else than by it. Thus it shall be. There shall be a Supreme Good in the spiritual world; I shall have the power to seek this with free dom until I find it, to acknowledge it as such when found, and it shall be my fault if I do not find it. This Supreme Good I shall will to know, merely because I will it; and if I will anything else instead of it, the fault shall be mine. My actions shall be the result of this will, and without it there shall absolutely no action of mine ensue, since there shall be no other power over my actions but this will. Then shall my powers, determined by, and subject to the dominion of, my will, invade the external world. I will be the lord of Nature, and she shall be my servant. I will influence her according to the measure of my capacity, but she shall have no influence on me.
This, then, is the substance of my wishes and as pirations. But the system, which has satisfied my understanding, has wholly repudiated these. Accord ing to the one, I am wholly independent of Nature and of any law which I do not impose upon myself; according to the other, I am but a strictly determined link in the chain of Nature. Whether such a freedom as I have desired be at all conceivable, and, if so, whether there be not grounds which, on complete and 400 THE VOCATION OF MAN.
thorough investigation, may compel me to accept it as a reality, and to ascribe it to myself, and whereby the result of my former conclusions might thus be refuted; — this is now the question.
To be free, in the sense stated, means that I myself will make myself whatever I am to be. I must then, — and this is what is most surprising, and, at first sight, absurd in the idea, — I must already be, in a certain sense, that which I shall become, in order to be able to become so; I must possess a two-fold being, of which the first shall contain the fundamental determining principle of the second. If I interrogate my immediate self-consciousness on this matter, I find the following. I have the knowledge of various possible courses of action, from amongst which, as it appears to me, I can choose wliich I please. I run through the whole circle, enlarge it, examine the various courses, compare one with another, and consider. I at length decide upon one, determine my will in accordance with it, and this resolution of my will is followed by a corre sponding action. Here then, certainly, I am beforehand, in the mere conception of my purpose, what subse quently, by means of this conception, I am in will and in action. I am as a thinking, what I afterwards am as an active, being. I create myself: — my being by my thought, my thought by previous thought. One can conceive the determinate state of a manifestation of the mere powers of Nature, of a plant for instance, as preceded by an indeterminate state, in which, if left to itself, it might have assumed any one of an infinite variety of possible determinations. These manifold possibilities are certainly possibilities within it, founded in its own peculiar character, but they are not possi- BOOK I. DOUBT. 401 bilities for it, because it is incapable of such an idea, and cannot choose or of itself put an end to this state of indecision: there must be external grounds by which it may be determined to some one of those various possibilities to which it is unable to determine itself. This determination can have no previous ex istence within it, for it is capable of but one mode of determination, that of real existence. Hence it was, that I formerly felt myself compelled to maintain that the manifestation of every power must receive its final determination from without. I, doubtless, only took cognizance of such powers as are incapable of consciousness, and manifest themselves merely in the outward world. To them the above assertion may be applied without the slightest limitation; with respect to intelligences, the grounds of this assertion are not admissible, and it appears, therefore, rash to extend it to them.
Freedom, such as I have laid claim to, is conceivable only of intelligences; but to them, undoubtedly, it belongs. Under this supposition, man, as well as nature, is perfectly comprehensible. My body, and my capacity of operating in the world of sense, are, as in the former system, manifestations of certain limited powers of Nature; and my natural inclinations are the relations of these manifestations to my consciousness. The mere knowledge of what exists independently of me arises under this supposition of freedom, precisely as in the former system; and up to this point, both agree. But according to the former, — and here begins the opposition betwreen these systems, — according to the former, my capacity of physical activity remains under the dominion of Nature, and is constantly set in motion N n 402 THE VOCATION OF MAN.
by the same power which produced it, and thought has here nothing whatever to do but to look on; ac cording to the latter, this capacity, once brought into existence, falls under the dominion of a power superior to Nature, and wholly independent of her laws, — the power of design and of will. Thought is no longer the mere faculty of observation; — it is the source of action itself. In the one case, it is forces, external and invisible to me, that put an end to my state of indecision, and limit my activity as well as my im mediate consciousness of it — that is, my will — to one point, just as the indeterminate activity of the plant is limited; — in the other, it is I myself, independent, and free from the influence of all outward forces, who put an end to my state of indecision, and determine my own course, according to the knowledge I have freely attained of what is best.
Which of these two opinions shall I adopt? Am I free and independent? — or am I nothing in myself, and merely the manifestation of a foreign power? It is clear to me that neither of the two doctrines is suffi ciently supported. For the first, there is no other recommendation than its mere conceivableness; for the latter, I extend a proposition which is perfectly true in its own place, beyond its proper and natural boundary. If intelligence be merely the manifestation of a power of Nature, then I do quite right to extend this principle to it: but, whether it be so or not, is the very question at issue; and this question I must solve by deduction from other premises, not by a one sided answer assumed at the very commencement ot BOOK I. DOUBT. 40.°, the inquiry, from which I again deduce that only which I myself have previously placed in it. In short, neither of the two opinions seems to be proved.
As little can this matter be determined by immediate consciousness. I can never become conscious either of the external powers, by which, in the system of uni versal necessity, I am determined; nor of my own power, by which, in the system of freedom, I deter mine myself. Thus, whichever of the two opinions I may accept, I still accept it without sufficient evidence, and simply on its own account.