Chapter 4 Volume 1 Doubt-3

In every human being, nature sees itself from a particular point of view.I call me me and you call you you; you call you me and I call you you; to you I am outside you as to me you are outside me.What I perceive first outside of me is that which limits me at close quarters; what you perceive first outside of yourself is that which limits you at close quarters.From this point we go on through its next link, but we follow different paths, which intersect at certain points but never converge toward each other in the same direction.In reality there are formed possible personalities, and thus possible ideas of consciousness.This consciousness of all individuals, taken together, constitutes the complete consciousness of the universe of itself; there is no other consciousness, since only the individual has complete certainty and reality.

The statement of the consciousness of every human being is true, so long as it is really that which we have described hitherto; for this consciousness develops out of the whole lawful course of nature, which cannot contradictory.Wherever there is an idea, there must also be a corresponding being, for ideas can only be created simultaneously with that corresponding being.For each man his particular consciousness is absolutely determined, because it springs from his essence.No one can be more conscious than he is, and no one can be more vivid than he is.The content of personal cognition depends on the individual's position in the universe, and the clarity and vividness of cognition depends on the size of the role that human power can exert on the individual.If nature is given an individual determination of a man, however trivial, be it the contraction of a muscle or the curling of a hair, if nature has a universal consciousness and can answer you, then , will naturally tell you all the thoughts that this person can have during the whole time of his conscious existence.

According to this system of doctrine, that well-known phenomenon in our consciousness which we call will becomes equally intelligible.Will is the immediate awareness of the workings of an inner natural force within us.The immediate awareness of the disposition to this power, which has not yet been brought into play because it is hindered by an opposing force, is in consciousness inclination or desire; the struggle of fighting forces is indecision; a power Winning is determined by will.If intentional powers are only those we have in common with plants or animals, then in our inner nature there is a split and debasement; This status, and according to the usual parlance, may well be called a low desire.If this force towards action is common to all human beings, then this desire is in keeping with our nature and may be called a higher desire.Generally speaking, the disposition of the latter force may with good reason be called the moral law.

The action of this force is the moral will, and the resulting action is virtue.That kind of low-level power that wins and is not in harmony with the high-level power is immoral; the former defeats the latter and ignores the opposition of the latter, which is sin. The victorious power is necessarily victorious; its superiority depends on the connection of the universe, and therefore the virtues, vices, and vices of any individual must also depend on this connection.If you add to nature the contraction of a muscle or the curling of a hair in a certain man, if nature as a whole can think and answer, it will thereby make all the good and evil of this man from life to death. All the ways are pointed out to you.

But virtue does not thereby cease to be virtue, and vice does not thereby cease to be evil.The virtuous man is noble by nature, the sinful man is base and corrupt by nature, yet both are natures that necessarily arise from cosmic connections. Confession is there, it is the awareness of the continuing human disposition within me, even after being overcome, with an unpleasant feeling of being overcome; it is a part of our higher nature. A restless, yet very precious foundation.From this awareness of our basic impulses also arises conscience, which varies in sensitivity and susceptibility in different individuals, some being larger, some smaller, and so on, and some People have lost their conscience.A man who is not noble cannot confess, because the humanity within him is not strong enough even against base motives.Rewards and punishments are the natural consequences of virtues and vices, which lead to new virtues and new vices.Our peculiar strengths, strengthened by frequent great victories, are weakened by inactivity or repeated defeats.The concepts of crime and responsibility for crime have only an external legal meaning.

A man commits a crime and is responsible for his transgression if he compels society to take artificial external measures to check the action of his motives which are dangerous to the public safety. My explorations are over, and my thirst for knowledge has been satisfied.I know what I am generally, what is the nature of my kind.I am an expression of the forces of nature that determine myself, and this expression is determined by the universe as a whole.It is impossible to fully understand the grounds of my particular personal stipulations, because I cannot penetrate to the inner core of nature.But I am directly aware of this determination of mine.I know exactly what I am in the present moment, I can remember roughly what I was before, and I know what I will be, if I will be that kind of thing.

It is impossible for me to use this discovery to guide my actions as I please, for I do not act at all, but nature acts in me; What I am doomed to do, because I did not make myself at all, but nature made me, and all that I am.I can repent, I can rejoice, I can have good intentions - though strictly speaking I can't even that, on the contrary, if everything is destined to happen to me, it will happen to me naturally —But by any confession, by any will, I am quite sure that I cannot alter in the slightest what I am forever destined to be.I am under the inexorable power of strict necessity; if this power condemns me to be a fool or a bad man, I will undoubtedly be; if it condemns me to be wise or good, I will Will undoubtedly become wise or good.This is neither its fault nor its merit nor mine.It is governed by its own laws, and I am governed by its laws.When I know this, it will be the most consoling thing to submit my wishes also to this power, to which my being is wholly subordinate.

Oh, these contradictory desires! Why on earth should I hide from myself any longer the sorrow, the disgust, the amazement that disturbed me when I saw how the inquiry ended?I have solemnly promised myself that my personal preferences will never influence the direction of my thinking; in fact, I have consciously prevented any such influence.But may I therefore not conclusively admit that the result of this inquiry contradicts my deepest and most secret premonitions, desires, and demands?In spite of the correctness and rigor of the proofs that support this consideration it seems to me, how can I believe in a deepest source and purpose of my existence--for which I would only live, Without it, I would loathe my existence—with seriously conflicting explanations?

Why should my heart mourn and break over that which so fully comforts my intellect?Nothing in nature contradicts itself, but man alone is a contradictory thing?Or, maybe not everyone, but just me and people like me?Should I, with the sweet fancy I once had, be in the immediate sphere of awareness of my being, and never ask the question of the grounds of my being--the answer to which makes me unhappy now--?But if this answer is correct, I must ask the question; in the past, it was not I who asked the question, but a natural force within me that could think.Doomed to be a wretched man, I mourn in vain the innocence of my lost soul, which shall never return.

But take courage! Let all else forsake me, so long as courage remains with me.For the sake of mere inclination, however deep it may be buried in my heart, however sacred it may seem, I certainly will not abandon conclusions drawn from indisputable grounds; but perhaps I have erred in my inquiry. , maybe I don't fully understand the materials on which the discussion must be based, and my views are one-sided.I should repeat my inquiry from the opposite end; in this way I can at least get a point of departure from which to proceed. But what was it that aroused so much repugnance and pain in making this decision?What am I hoping to find to replace this decision?Let me start by figuring out which hobby I'm resorting to!

I am doomed to be a wise man and a good man, or to be a foolish man and a wicked man. I cannot change this destiny. I have no merit in the former and I am innocent in the latter; this is what disgusts and astonishes me. things.The ground of my being and the attributes of my being is determined outside myself, and the expression of this ground is determined by other grounds than this; this is what repells me so strongly.That freedom which does not belong to me but to an alien force outside me, which is only conditioned and incomplete even in an alien force, is freedom which does not satisfy me.The self itself, that which I am aware of as myself and myself, that which appears in this system of doctrine to be the mere expression of a higher being—I would like myself to be independent—is not Something that exists by or through another, but something that exists for myself; and as such, I would like myself to be the ultimate ground of my determination. I would like to take for myself the place that every original force of nature has in this system of doctrine; with this difference, that the manner of my manifestation should not be determined by alien forces.I would like to have an inner, unique power which, like those forces of nature, expresses itself in infinite variety; Natural forces, because the manifestations of natural forces occur precisely under external conditions. What, then, should be the true place and center of this unique force of the ego, according to my desire?Evidently not my body, because I am willing to admit that the body is indeed an expression of the forces of nature, if not in its other properties, at least in its existence; I regard this inclination as a relation of the forces of nature to my consciousness; so that the true place and center of this peculiar force of the self is my mind and my will. I am free to carry out my will in accordance with a freely formulated conception of ends; this will, as the ground absolutely ultimate and not determined by any possible higher ground, should first move and shape my body, and then through my body Pushing and shaping the world around me.My active forces of nature should be subject only to the will, which can never be set in motion by anything else but the will.That's how it should be.According to the laws of the spirit, there should be a supreme good.Until I find the good, I was free to seek it, and when I have found it, I admit that it is such a thing, and it is my nature; if I do not find it, it is my fault.Just because I desire the best, I demand the best; and if I desire something other than the best, I err. Out of this will my actions arise, without which I would not be able to produce any action, since there is no other possible power than my will that would cause my action.Only in this way can my power determined and governed by the will intervene in nature.I will be the master of nature, and nature should be my servant; I will influence nature according to my power, and never let nature influence me. This is what I hope and ask for.The kind of inquiry that satisfies my intellect completely contradicts these hopes and demands.If, according to my wishes and claims, I should be independent of nature, and of any law not given to me by myself, then, on that account, I am a perfectly definite link in the chain of nature.Is such a freedom as I expect conceivable at all?If it is conceivable, are there grounds, in a thorough and complete reflection, which compel me to admit that this freedom is real and to attribute it to myself, thereby overthrowing the former What is the result of the discussion?That's the problem. I want to be free, which means, as already indicated, to make myself what I will be.So, before I become what I will be, in order to be able to make me what I am, I must—this is the most astonishing thing, and at first glance the utter absurdity involved in the concept The content of my being—has already in a certain respect what I shall be; I must have a double existence, the first of which contains the determined grounds of the second.On this question, if I examine my immediate self-consciousness in the will, I find the following: I know as many possibilities of action as I feel, from which I can choose which one I wish to take. All action.I go over the whole range of possible actions, expand the range, figure out each possible action, compare and measure them against each other.In the end I choose a possible action, by which my will is determined, and from this determination of my will a corresponding action arises.Here, indeed, in the mere act of thinking about my object, I pre-become what I then actually become by will and action according to this thinking; Thinking, what later becomes of the living being as acting.I make myself into myself: I make my being out of my thinking, my thinking out of thinking itself.We can also conceive of a state of indeterminacy preceding the determinate state of expression of a mere force of nature, such as a plant, in which there are rich and varied determinations which, if they themselves Dominate yourself, and you will adopt these rules.These multiplicity and possibility are established, of course, within the power of nature, within the power peculiar to nature, but not for the power of nature, which cannot form concepts, cannot Making a choice cannot end this uncertainty by itself.It must be some external determinative grounds that limit the forces of nature from all possible states to one possible state, and the forces of nature themselves cannot limit themselves to this one state.In natural forces, the determination of natural forces cannot take place before these determinations exist, because natural forces can only be determined in one way, and this way is according to the actual existence of natural forces.I have therefore been compelled to assert above that any manifestation of power must receive its complete determination from without.Needless to say, at that time I was thinking only of these forces which manifest themselves entirely through existence and cannot be conscious.The above statement, without any limitation, holds true for these forces; but it has no basis for intellectual forces, and it would seem presumptuous to extend it to intellectual forces as well. The liberty I demanded above is conceivable only in the power of the intellect, and it is undoubtedly so in the power of the intellect.Even on this premise, man, like nature, is perfectly understandable.My body and my capacity to act in the world of the senses, as in the system above, are expressions of limited natural forces; and my natural inclination is the relation of this expression to my consciousness.