dom is turned into nature, as it were, and called upon to operate and produce a fixed and permanent Being like an irresistible and compulsory law of nature.

II. The particular, moral determination of each individual, which is his in consequence of his origination from out the universal life, does not arise into consciousness in the described universal contemplation, but only in the separate and altogether internal self-contemplation of the individual as such, since this determination is his exclusively own Being. The question is, How and in what manner?

In order to answer this question thoroughly and clearly, let us investigate more closely the condition of moral freedom and its contemplatability. We saw above that the mere sensuous individuality, even without any appearance of the moral law in consciousness, makes actual acting completely possible, and real freedom, the possibility of determining one's self to do a specific act, in every way perfectible. If the moral law is added, there arises a limitation of that determined possibility; at first, of course, merely in the conception. It is conceived that the possible freedom of acting must be limited to a determined, limited sphere. Now, in consequence of this conception, the free individual, confined to the described condition, is to limit himself by a free act, and this free act is to be visible as such, since the law, as determining the life, is to be visible. But the free act, according to a previously demonstrated proposition, is visible only when a resistance occurs; hence the visibility of the moral determination ast such posits, first of all, a resistance. The resistance must, therefore, be manifested-just as the visibility manifests itself-absolutely. And since it is the one life, as nature, which is determined by the formal visibility of the moral law, it must be that one life which produces such a resistance.

But, again, where must this resistance appear? Evidently in physical freedom itself, for it is this feedom which is to be determined, and, moreover, in its individual form, since here we speak only of this kind of form. This resistance is not itself an acting. For freedom is to be limited in advance of this acting. Hence, it must be necessarily a principle, which, without the moral limi tation, would be an acting. In other words, it must be an impulse, for by that word we have characterized such a principle before. It must be, moreover, a positive impulse, and by no

means a mere indifference to act without any moral determination; an impulse which, in resisting this determination, must be overcome by it, and in the very overcoming of which the moral free deed must become visible. It is a necessary consequence of individuation that such an impulse should appear in the individual; for it belongs to the individual form, as a form wherein the actual causality of the moral law is to become visible.

It is a positive impulse to act, for the present, without any moral law. But for that very reason it aspires to perfect its whole form, and thus to be absolute, even though it be against the moral law. It wants to abrogate the moral law altogether. In our consciousness it will thus appear as a natural will, given to us through our mere sensuous existence. Hence the law, against which it rebels, and which, on its account, rebels against it, as a shall, as the negation of the will in its function, as a ground of determination. Hence this peculiar form of the law, which for that very reason is valid also only for this opposition. In determining the one life, the final end has not at all the form of the shall, but only the form of the must. It rules as a law of nature. The impulse itself is its product in so far as it is a law of nature, and exists only for the sake of its visibility and in its mere form; the same impulse which, through the same law, as a determining law of freedom, is to be annihilated, not so far as its being is concerned, which would be a contradiction, but as a determining ground of acting.

REMARK.

This impulse is a natural impulse, and, if we follow it, it produces an acting according to the law of nature. Hence, in following the impulse, the individual is not at all free, but subservient to an irrevocable law; and in this region life, in its mere form as pure life, has no causality whatever.

But what, then, is the content of this acting in general, and generally, of the manyfold in its seeming manifestation of freedom? We have seen it before: the mere contemplatability of life as such, without any real core; a mere picturing in order to be a picturing; a Nothing, forever to be further formed. The individual who acts in obedience to the impulse acts under the law of this further evolution of the Nothing.

Again, if, on the other hand, the individual determines himself

through the moral law, he also is not free, and life again has no causality; for this is what freedom means. Has he, then, no freedom at all? Yes, certainly in the transition, in rising from the condition of nature to that of morality.

This enables us to offer a ready reply to the question propounded. Consciousness is the freedom of a Being; determined consciousness, freedom of a determined being. Whatsoever is to be the immediate consciousness of a subject must be immediately the actual being of that same subject. If the subject is absorbed by the natural impulse, his moral determinatedness still remains, of course; his being; but only in the background, as it were. His immediate, actual being, is that impulse. Hence the impulse alone is manifested in consciousness, and it is absolutely impossible that the moral determinedness should manifest itself in consciousness at least so far as its contents are concerned; for, in regard to the form, and in so far as that form is contained in the general conception of law, as a part of the universal contemplation, it may be otherwise. Now, what is the ground of this impossibility? The absorption by the impulse. Hence the individual must, first of all, get rid of the impulse. Can he do this? Or, in order to give another form to the question: Since such a selfridding of the law of nature on the part of the individual, without having determined himself as yet by the moral law, would be the just described freedom, the causality of the life through itself, is the individual really and in point of fact free?

Since such a freedom conditions the determinability through the moral law, and hence its absolute visibility, does not this actual and real freedom belong to the absolute determinations of the individual, as such, which it receives immediately from nature under the determination of the final end?

Three things, therefore, constitute the essence of the individual: 1. The natural impulse; 2. The moral determination or destination; and 3. Absolute freedom as the mediating link between the two former.

Hence the individual must annihilate the impulse, as its immediately actual being, through this freedom. Does any Being, then, still adhere to it? Of course; that is, its moral destination; and this is now its immediate, actual Being. For the present, how

ever, it is still free in regard to it, since it has not yet determined itself in accordance with the laws of that destination. Hence it now enters the emptied consciousness necessarily, in consequence

of the law of consciousness.

Now, what sort of a consciousness is this? As the immediate expression of Being, it is necessarily an immediate contemplation, which forms itself under this condition precisely as it is, without any freedom on the part of the knowing-such as we meet in thinking, which is a going beyond contemplation-and accompanied, as all contemplation is, by immediate evidence. Its content has no external ground, and cannot be made a subject of argument, like a series of thinking. It simply is, and is what it is; that is, it is a consciousness that I am called upon to do this very particular thing.

Result. The determinatedness of moral consciousness is not produced by the freedom of thinking, but absolutely creates itself. It is true that freedom co-operates in the process, but somewhat differently. By killing the impulse, it puts itself into the condition wherein it can realize itself that determined contemplation propounds a problem, which the individual can freely make his own, and which he ought to and most certainly, according to the above, can solve. But the acting of the individual is an infinite line, and, by virtue of that infinity, stands under the moral law. Hence, after accomplishing the first problem, a second problem will arise for the individual-conditioned by the first one-and so on ad infinitum. The moral destination of the individual, which is altogether completed by his going beyond universal life, as a Being, can thus arise to consciousness only in an infinite, never-to-befinished series of separate, determined contemplations, which series is connected and remains the same through the law of conditionedness; and the determined act, we are called upon and actually can do, is valid only for the determined time-moment.

The impulse, as an essential component part of the individual, remains eternal; hence freedom also remains eternal. If, therefore, the individual had determined himself to realize his determined moral problem, he nevertheless would be able to repeal, or cancel, this his moral task at any time; or, even if he did undertake the next task, he still might refuse obedience to the following, etc., etc. In this condition his infinite life would therefore reXVIII-5

main an everlasting self-determination, a continuous creation of free resolves, which, however, might just as well be moral as immoral. But in that case the moral law would also not be a determinedness of Being, of the fixed, unchangeable unit of individual life, as it proposes to be; but it would exist merely accidentally, and as a determining ground of some manifestations of life without any rule or law whatever.

These accidental manifestations would be moral, to be sure, but the life itself, in its root and basis, would remain immoral.

That accomplished problem was in contemplation; hence life must be determined by contemplation. But it is to be determined by the absolutely invisible and eternal unity of the law. How can this determination, as the only true morality of the individual, manifest itself?

Evidently only by the absolute annihilation and canceling of the impulse as well as of freedom, since the described opposite condition is founded on the latter. Now, neither of them can be annihilated as faculties. They must, therefore, be annihilated as facts. The individual must have the power to determine himself for all eternity never to admit any more as a fact the freedom which nevertheless continues as a possibility forever.

Determination through freedom is called a free Willing-not the previously described natural Willing. That determination. would, therefore, be a resolve henceforth and forever to obeywithout flinching or considering, and without any separate resolve of freedom-the moral law, in whatever form it may present itself in our infinite contemplation.

Of course, freedom would remain as a faculty-a possibility; and hence such a will-for in its continuance we must call it will, and not, as in the moment of its origination, resolve-must uphold itself eternally through itself, which upholding is precisely the continuous annihilation of the always possible real freedom, and will manifest itself as such an upholding. But continuous self-deter mination, to be moral, is now no longer possible, since this self-determination has been achieved for all eternity. Now let the moral law develop itself internally hereafter in the infinitely continued series of contemplations, and you may be sure that its eternal life will develop itself precisely in the same manner, since the Will, as the mediating agency, is always present.