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 possible for a mere will to produce any effect at all, — as to this we can have no concep tion whatever, so long as we are still confined within 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 there fore, in relation to the future, a life in faith. 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 in 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 find it around us, the fitting adjustment 516 THE VOCATION OF MAN.
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 related 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 requisite 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 useless; 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 eternal existence. It is very possible, that the immediate purpose of this se cond life may be as unattainable 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 appear superfluous and without result. But it can never be lost there, any more than here, for it is the unalterable command of reason and inseparable from her existence. Its necessary efficacy would, in that case, direct us to a third life, in which the con sequences of our virtuous will in the second life would 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.
BOOK III. FAITH. 517 As in the present life it is only from the command of conscience 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 inconceivable 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 conse quences 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 manner, through another command of duty; for in no other manner can a world exist to 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 action. The whole end of reason is pure activity, absolutely by itself alone, having no need of any instrument 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 simply apprehended; that reason is active by itself alone, means, that pure will, merely as such, operates and rules. Immediately and wholly in this purely spiritual order lives only the Infinite Reason. The finite reason — which does not itself constitute the world of reason, but is only one of its many members, — lives necessarily at the same time in a sensuous order; that is to say, 518 THE VOCATION OF MAN.
in one which presents to it another object besides a purely spiritual activity; — ^a material object, to be pro moted by instruments and powers which indeed stand under the immediate dominion of the will, but whose activity is also conditioned by their own natural laws. Yet as surely as reason is reason, must the will operate absolutely by itself, and independently of the natural laws by which the action is determined; and therefore does the sensuous life of every finite being point to wards a higher, into which the will, by itself alone, may open the way, and of which it may acquire pos session, — a possession which indeed we must again sensuously conceive of as a state, and by no means as a mere will.
These two orders, — the purely spiritual and the sen suous, the latter consisting possibly of an innumerable series of particular lives, — have existed in me from the first moment of the development of my active reason, and still proceed parallel to each other. The latter order is only a phenomenon for myself, and for those whose being is similar to my own; 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 present after an existence of myriads of lives than at this moment. My sensuous existence may, in future, assume other forms, but these are just as little the true life, as its present form. By that resolution I lay hold on eternity, and cast off this earthly life and all other forms of sensuous life which may yet lie be- BOOK III. FAITH. 519 fore me in futurity, and place myself far above them. I become the sole source of all 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-sensual world, but by myself alone, is this source of true life, and of eternity.
But it is my will alone which is this source of true life, and of 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 respect to any conceivable or visible object, without inquiry as to whether my will may be followed by any other result than the mere volition, — I must will in accordance with the moral law. My will stands alone, apart from all that is not itself, and is its own world merely by itself and for itself; not only as being itself an absolutely first, primary and original power, without any preceding influence by which it may be governed, but also as being followed by no conceivable or comprehensible result, or second step in the series, by which its activity might be brought under the do minion of a foreign law. Did there proceed from it any second, and from this again a third result, and so forth, in any conceivable sensuous world opposed to the spiritual world, then would its strength be broken by the resistance it would encounter from the inde pendent 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 hetero- 520 THE VOCATION OF MAN.
geneous sphere of action. And thus must I actually regard the will in the present sensuous 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 im press of intelligence 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 under standing, a palpable absurdity, — and here the move ment of matter even in myself can only be explained by the internal forces of matter itself.
Such a view of my will as I have taken can, how ever, only be attained through an intimate conviction that it is not 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 despises 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 with out 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 demanded of us absolutely for its own sake alone, — a truth which I only discover 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 reason- BOOK III. FAITH. 521 able, 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 tilings must, on the con trary, model themselves upon it, and be dependent upon it, — a conviction which also I cannot arrive at from without, but can only attain by inward experience, by means of the unhesitating and immovable assent which I freely accord to this demand: — 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 possi bility of attaining this object, before it can act, and before it can become virtue; 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 contemplation of an external world; — if this were true, then might the ulti mate end of our existence be accomplished here below; human nature might be completely developed and ex hausted 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, perhaps by a mere love of the new and unusual, and who is able to pro secute a correct course of reasoning from them, might speak and teach as I have now spoken to myself. He z z 522 THE VOCATION OF MAN.
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 ap prehend its reality. He is a blind man, who, upon certain true principles concerning colours which he has learned historically, has built a perfectly correct 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 condi tions. The faculty by which we lay hold on Eternal Life is only to be attained by actually renouncing the sen suous and its objects, and sacrificing them to that law which takes cognizance of our will only, and not of our actions; — renouncing them with the firmest con viction 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 support 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 — O I now see clearly before me the cause of my former indifference and blindness concerning spiritual things! Absorbed by mere earthly objects, lost in them with all my thoughts and efforts, moved and urged onward only by the notion of a result to BOOK III. FAITH. 523 be realized out of ourselves, — by the desire of such a result, and 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 pi nions, 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 vocation. 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 essentially 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 our selves 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 satisfaction that all such ideas are untenable and worthless reveries, which the man of sound understanding unhesitatingly rejects; and 524 THE VOCATION OF MAN.
according to the premises from which we proceed, which are made up of our own inward experiences, we are perfectly in the right, and secure from either re futation or conversion, so long as we remain what we are. The excellent doctrines which are taught amongst us with a special authority, concerning freedom, duty, and everlasting life, 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 under stood, 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 improve ment 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 re mains 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 determination of my will in accordance with BOOK III. FAITH. 525 duty, although no action should follow it, shall operate in another, to me incomprehensihle, 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 excep tion, according to which a will determined by duty must have consequences; just as in the material world which surrounds 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 ve locity, — and so on. As here, in the mere direction and motion of my hand, I already perceive and apprehend all the consequent directions and movements, with the same certainty as if they were already present before me; even so do I embrace by means of my virtuous will a series of necessary and inevitable consequences in the spiritual world, as if they were already present before 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 conceive 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 conception of this law of the spiritual world, are one and the same; — they are not two thoughts, one of which arises by means of the other, but they are en tirely the same thought; just as the confidence with which I calculate on a certain motion in a material body, z z 2 526 THE VOCATION OF MAN.
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, immovahle confidence of reason in a principle, and the absolute 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 sub ject. Neither I, nor any finite and therefore sensuous being, can conceive how a mere will can have conse quences, nor what may be the nature of those conse quences; for herein consists the essential character 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 sen suous 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 ma terial world, my hand, or any other body which be longs to that world and is subject to the universal 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 does 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 BOOK III. FAITH. 527 they themselves, in accordance with the form of that law which is applicable to finite wills, bring themselves under its conditions, and within the sphere of its ac tivity, by moral obedience; — 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 em braces all bodies, and holds them together in them selves and with each other, and the movement of each separate body is only possible on the supposition of this power, so docs that super-sensual law unite, hold together, and embrace all finite reasonable beings. My will, and the will of all finite beings, may be regarded from a double point of view: — partly as a mere voli tion, an internal act directed upon itself alone, and, in so far, the will is complete in itself, concluded in this act of volition; — 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 move ment of which, again, other movements follow, — in the