Chapter 20 Volume 3 Faith-8

IV My lawful will is simply as such, in and by itself.will produce results without a doubt, without exception; every conscientious determination of my will, even if it produces no action, will operate in another world that we do not understand, and except this conscientious Nothing will function in this world except as dictated by his will. —But what do I conceive?What am I presupposing when I conceive this? Evidently, this is a law, a valid rule without exception, according to which a conscientious will must produce its results; just as in the mortal world around me I postulate a law according to which According to the law, when a sphere is pushed to a certain direction by my hand with a certain force, it will inevitably move forward at a certain speed in this direction, and may collide with another sphere with a certain force. At this time, the other sphere moves forward continuously at a certain speed, so that it progresses to infinity.Here, I have used the simple direction and movement of my hand to recognize and grasp all future directions and movements, and I am sure that they seem to be in front of me and have been perceived by me. Similarly, in the spiritual world I also use My conscientious will grasps a series of necessary and unavoidable consequences as if they were at hand, except that I cannot determine these consequences of the spiritual world in the same way as I can determine the consequences of the physical world, that is, I only know them. They must be so, but do not know how they are; and just as I do so, I conceive a law of the spiritual world, of which my pure will is one of the dynamics, as my hand is matter One of the driving forces of the world.It is one and the same thing to strengthen my faith and to conceive this law of the spiritual world; they are not two thoughts, as if the one were produced by the other, but one and the same thought, as I The belief in calculating a certain motion is the same idea as the assumption of a mechanical law of nature.The concept of a law signifies nothing at all but the firm and unshakable dependence of reason on theorems and the absolute impossibility of assuming the contrary.

I postulate a law of the spiritual world which is given neither by my will nor by the will of some finite being combined with all finite beings, but by my will and of all finite beings. The will is subject to this law.Even to understand how a mere will produces effects, and what their nature may be, is neither within my reach nor within the reach of some finite, and therefore in some respects sensuous, being, For the very essence of their finiteness is their inability to comprehend this. —I and some finite being, though in complete control of mere will itself, must, through our sensibility, regard the results of the will as sensuous states; Assuming that which is neither conceivable nor comprehensible as the concept of end, is it considered to have reality? —I cannot say that in the physical world, my hand or some body contained in this world, determined by the law of gravitation, gives a natural law of motion; To this law of nature, and according to this law to share in the general dynamics of nature, can move another body.Likewise, the finite will does not give laws to the supersensible world that the finite mind cannot grasp. On the contrary, all finite wills are subject to the laws of the supersensible world and can produce something in this world. The reason for this is that Just because this law already exists, all finite will itself obeys the constraints of this law and enters the sphere of action of this law according to the fundamental law applicable to the supersensible world of finite will; I say the sense of duty , refers to the only link that connects all finite wills to the supersensible world, the only nerve that descends from the supersensible world to the finite will, and the only faculty by which all finite wills can react to the supersensible world.Just as gravitation pervades all bodies, connects them to itself, and thereby unites all bodies into one body, and only on the premise of gravitation, the motion of each body is possible; United, holds them within itself, and puts them in order within itself. —My will and the will of all finite beings can be seen from a dual point of view: on the one hand it can be seen as a mere will, as an inner activity upon itself, insofar as the will has attained in itself Perfection, which ends in mere activity; on the other hand, can be regarded as something, as a fact.As long as I regard the will as already perfected, it becomes something to me; but it must also become such a thing outside of me: as the principle of motion in the world of sense, for example as the principle of motion of my hand. The motion of my hand produces other motions; in the supersensible world is the source of a series of mental effects of which I have no conception.From the first point of view, the will, as a mere act, is entirely within my control; it becomes the latter, this first principle, which does not depend on me but on what I obey. A law of nature, a law of nature in the sensible world, depends on a supersensible law in the supersensible world.

But what are the laws of this kind of spiritual world that I conceive? —The concept is here now, in a fixed and perfect shape, to which I cannot or dare not add anything; I simply want to explain and analyze the concept to myself. —Obviously, this is by no means a law of the kind in my sensuous world, or in some possible sensuous world, as if something else, as mere will, would presuppose such laws, as if a will-propelled and developed A permanent, static existence from an inner force would presuppose laws of this kind; for—and this is certainly the content of my belief—my will should rest entirely on its own, without any means of weakening its expression. as reason to reason, as spiritual things to spiritual things, in a sphere quite analogous to it; yet my will does not give this sphere the laws of life, activity, and progress, but This realm has laws of this kind within itself; my will, therefore, acts on my own active reason.But reason, which is itself active, is will.Therefore, the law of the supersensible world should be a kind of will.

This is a will which acts purely as will, by itself, and never by means of any instrument, or by any sensible material which it affects; As a result, its desire is to do something, and its requirement is to make achievements; therefore, in this will, the requirement of absolute freedom and self-activity of reason is expressed.This is a will which is law in itself, which does not determine itself according to likes and dislikes and imaginations, according to past reflections, hesitation and wavering, but is forever determined; Depend on this will, as mortals do depend on the laws of their world.It is a will in which the lawful will of finite beings has inevitable consequences, but only this will, since it is immovable with respect to everything else. To this will, everything else is simply non-existent.

The sublime will, therefore, did not go its own way apart from the other worlds of reason. There is a spiritual bond between it and all limited rational beings, and it is itself the spiritual bond of the rational world. —I desire my duty purely and resolutely, so it desires my success, at least in the spiritual world.Every lawful decision of the will of a finite being involves it, or, in our language, impels and determines it, not according to an impromptu delight, but according to the eternal laws of its existence.This thought, which had hitherto shrouded me in gloom, now loomed before my soul with astonishing clarity, this thought: My will, simply as will, is fruitful by itself.It has its effect because it is infallibly and directly perceived by another will connected with it, which is itself action, the only living principle of the spiritual world; in this other will, It has its first effect, and through this other will it acts on the rest of the spiritual world, which is everywhere but the product of that infinite will.

Thus I merged—a mortal man must have chosen this word from his language—into that other will; the voice of conscience in the depths of my soul taught me in every situation of my life that I What to do, it is the channel through which that will converges on me in turn.This voice is the oracle of the eternal world, embodied only in the sensuous aspects of my surroundings, transformed from my perception into my language, which declares to me how I should behave in the order of the spiritual world or in the infinite The duty in the will, and this infinite will itself is indeed the order of the spiritual world.I cannot survey and penetrate the spiritual order, nor need I; I am only a bad link in the chain of the spiritual order, and I cannot judge the whole any more than a single note in a chorus can judge the harmony of the whole.But what I myself should be in this spiritual harmony, I must know, because only I myself can make me do it, and it is directly revealed to me by a voice coming to me from that spiritual world. .So, I am united with the One that actually exists, and share in its existence.Apart from these two elements, the voice of my conscience and my free obedience, there is absolutely nothing real, permanent, and unchanging in me.Through the former, the spiritual world bows to me, embraces me, and accepts me as one of its own; through the latter, I lift myself up into the world, grasp it, and act on it.That infinite will is the intermediary between the spiritual world and me, because that infinite will itself is the source of the spiritual world and me. —This is the only real and immortal thing, to which my soul yearns from its innermost depths; all other things are mere appearances, which gradually fade away and return to a new illusion .

This will unites me to itself; this will unites me to all finite beings like myself, and is the common medium between us all.To the extent that the invisible world is the world or system of many individual wills, the union and direct interaction of many independent and independent wills, this is the great secret and fundamental law of the invisible world; To no one's surprise, this secret is plainly in front of everyone's eyes in the present life. —The voice of conscience which sets forth his special duty to each is a ray of light by which we are established from the infinite as individual and particular beings; this voice delimits our personality; it is therefore Our true primordial constituents are the foundation and material of all the lives we lead.The absolute freedom of the will which we carry from the infinite to the world of time is the principle of our life. - I act.Assuming sensuous intuition, the intellectual force through which alone I am a personality, it is easy to understand how I must know my action; I know it because it is I who is acting there; —It is also easy to understand how, with the help of this sensuous intuition, my mental actions appear to me as actions in the sensuous world, or, conversely, how the orders of duty, which are purely spiritual in themselves, can use this sensualization, Appears to me as the command of such an action;—it is also easy to understand how an existing world can appear to me as the condition of this action on the one hand, and as the result and product of this action on the other.Therefore, I always remain only within myself, in my own sphere; everything that exists to me develops purely and completely from myself; And never intuit any alien, real existence outside of me. —But at the same time I assume in my world that the activities of other beings should exist independently of me, just as I myself exist independently of them.

It is also easy to understand how these beings alone can know the actions that proceed from themselves; they know them of them in the same way that I know mine.But just as it is absolutely incomprehensible how I could know their activity, it is equally incomprehensible how they could know my being and my performance, and this knowledge of them is, after all, imaginary. Since the principle by which our consciousness of our selves, of our activities and their sensuous conditions has developed from us—that every intellectual force must know beyond dispute what it does—simply cannot apply here, then , How do other creatures enter my world, and how do I enter their world?How can free spirits have knowledge of free spirits, since we know that the individual free spirits are the only real thing, and that the independent sensuous worlds in which they influence each other cannot be conceived at all?Or, if you want to tell me that I perceive those rational beings like myself through the changes they cause in the world of senses, then I ask you, how on earth do you perceive these changes themselves? ?I quite understand how you perceive the changes caused by purely natural mechanical force, because the laws of this mechanical force are nothing more than the laws of your own thinking, and you further develop a suddenly set world for yourself according to it.But the changes of which I am here speaking cannot be caused by the mechanical forces of nature, but by a free will which overrides all nature, and you can deduce from them only if you look at them from this aspect. rational beings like you.

What then could be this law in you, by which you can recognize the determination of other wills that are absolutely independent of you? —In short, this mutual knowledge and interaction of free beings in this world is completely incomprehensible according to the laws of nature and thought, and can only be brought about by the one who connects each free being and separates them from each other. is explained by the One, by the Infinite Will which holds and bears all things within its sphere.The knowledge we have of each other is not communicated directly from one to the other; we have been separated by an insurmountable boundary.Only through our common spiritual source do we know each other; only in this source do we know each other and interact with each other. ——"Here respect the image of freedom on the ground, here respect the work that bears the mark of freedom", the voice of the will calls to me in my heart, and it only talks to me when it proposes a duty to me ;this alone is the principle by which I recognize you and your work, because conscience commands me to respect it.

From whence, then, come our senses, our perceptual intuitions, our strictly reasoning laws of thought--on all these things build up the perceptual world we see and in which we think we interact? What about?Regarding the latter two, that is, regarding intuition and the laws of thought, to answer that they are the laws of reason itself is to give no satisfactory answer.Of course, for those of us who are intoxicated in the realm of reason, it is not even possible to conceive of another reason or a reason obeying other laws.The real laws of reason itself are only practical laws, laws of the supersensible world or of that sublime will.If we wish to leave it alone for the present, whence comes our general agreement on sensations, which are, after all, something positive, immediate, and inexplicable?We all see the same sensuous world, which depends on this unity of the laws of sensation, intuition, and thought.

Philosophy of mere knowledge answers that it is a consistent and incomprehensible limitation of the bounded rational beings of our species, which are a species just because of their uniform limitation, and this answer must serve as the basis for this. One of the highest principles of philosophy survives.But what can limit reason but that which is itself reason?What limits all finite will but the infinite?This unity of all of us with respect to the as if pre-given world of sensibility upon which life is based, is the domain of our duty - strictly speaking, as our unity with the products of our mutual freedom, is incomprehensible - the result of the One, Eternal and Infinite Will.Our belief in this unity which I have just examined, as a belief in our duty, is essentially a belief in this infinite will, in its reason, and in its fidelity.However, what is the pure truth that we assume and trust in the perceptual world?It is nothing more than this: that from the faithful and free fulfillment of our duty in this world grows a life which will always promote our liberty and ethics.If this happens, then there is truth in our world, the only truth possible to finite beings; this must happen, because this world is the result of an eternal will within us; The law of its existence, in addition to the purpose that has been determined, cannot give any other ultimate purpose to finite creatures. The Eternal Will is therefore certainly the creator of the world, and it can be such a creator only in bounded rationality, and only in bounded rationality is such a creation required.Those who think that the Eternal Will created the world out of Eternal Emotional Matter, which, like the tools of the hand, can only be inert and inanimate, and cannot produce from itself an eternal process of development, or Those who think that it is conceivable to create something material out of nothing know neither the world nor the Eternal Will.If only matter is something, then everywhere there is nothing.And there is always nothing but nothingness everywhere.But only reason exists; infinite reason exists in itself, and finite reason exists in and through infinite reason.Only in our minds does the eternal will create a world, at least that which we have developed a world from and by which we have developed a world, namely, the voice of duty and the unity of feeling, intuition, and laws of thought. .It is the radiance of the Eternal Will that enables us to see the light and all that is revealed to us in that light.The eternal will in our minds is constantly shaping the world, intervening in it, because it intervenes in our minds with the cry of duty whenever another free being has changed the world.The Eternal Will in our minds maintains this world, and thus our finite existence alone, because it continually causes other states to arise out of our state.After the Eternal Will has tested us sufficiently for our immediate mission according to its higher purpose, and we have trained ourselves sufficiently for this mission, it destroys our present life by what we call death. world, leading us into a new world, that is, into the results of our responsible actions in this world. All our lives are its lives.We are in its hands, always in its hands, and no one can get us out of its grasp.We are eternal because it is eternal. Sublime and living will, you are indescribable and incomprehensible! To you I lift my heart, for you are not separate from me.Your voice rings in me, and my voice echoes in you; and all my thoughts, so long as they are true and kind, are of you.In you, the incomprehensible, I become perfectly intelligible to myself, and the world to myself, all the riddles of my existence are solved, and the most perfect harmony.