Chapter 15 Volume 3 Faith-3

I That voice in the depths of my soul that I believe in - and because of this voice I believe in everything else I believe in - does not order me to act in general.This is impossible; all these general principles can only be formed by my free observation and reflection on many facts, but never in these principles themselves represent a fact.This voice of my conscience commands me only what must be done and what must be avoided in every particular circumstance of my existence; It never refuses to enlighten me where I must act. It immediately establishes conviction and demands my assent with irresistible force; it is impossible for me to fight it.

To heed this call, to obey it faithfully, without restraint, without fear, without thinking, is my only calling, and this is the whole purpose of my existence.My life was no longer an empty game without truth and without meaning.Something must be done simply because it must be done; that is precisely what conscience demands of me in the circumstances in which I am; I live to do such things, and only to do them. I live for such a thing; to know it I have intellect, and to accomplish it I have power. It is only through this command of conscience that my representations have truth and reality.I cannot ignore it, disobey it, without at the same time reneging on my mission.

I cannot, therefore, refuse to believe in the reality which the dictates of conscience arouse, without at the same time denying my mission.I must obey this cry, which is absolutely true, needs no further examination and demonstration, and which is the primordial truth upon which all other truths and certainties are based; That which is supposed to be true and certain because of its possibility is true and certain for me. There are phenomena floating in front of me in space to which I extend concepts about myself, imagining them as beings like myself.A speculative derivation has indeed taught me, or will teach me, that these hypothetical beings of reason outside of me are but products of my own representational activity; According to the specified law, the concept of myself has to be embodied outside of myself, and according to the same law, this concept can only be extended to certain intuitions.But the voice of my conscience cries out to me thus: "Whatever these creatures are in themselves, you should treat them as beings that exist for themselves, free, independent, and completely independent of you. You It may be conceived, as is already known, that they can set their ends entirely independently of you, and that you should in no way hinder its realization, but, on the contrary, do everything in your power to facilitate its realization. You should Respect their freedom, and grasp their ends with love as well as yours."—I should act thus; All my thoughts may and must be directed toward this action, the voice of my conscience.I will therefore always regard those beings as beings that exist for themselves, independent of me, capable of making and fulfilling purposes.From this point of view it was impossible for me to think otherwise of them, and that speculation would vanish before my eyes like an empty dream.I have just said that I conceived of them as beings like myself, but strictly speaking, they first appeared to me as such, not from such thoughts, but from the voice of my conscience, the voice of my conscience. Command, it says: "Here you temper your freedom, here you imagine and respect alien ends". ——It is this command that is translated into a kind of thinking, thinking that there is indeed a creature like me here, which exists for itself.If I do not see them in this way, I must deny the voice of my conscience in my life and ignore the voice of my conscience in my speculation.

Floating before me were other phenomena, which I thought were not beings like myself, but something irrational.It is not difficult to show speculatively how representations of such things arise only from my power of representation and its necessary modes of action.But I also grasp these things through needs, desires, and enjoyments.Something becomes my food and drink, not from an idea, but from hunger and thirst and its satisfaction.I had to believe in the reality of that which threatened my sensuous life, or which alone could sustain it.Conscience both honors and restricts these instincts, and thus takes part in the maintenance of this sensuous life. "You should maintain, exercise, and strengthen yourself and your physical strength, for this strength is reckoned in the rational scheme. And you can maintain this strength only because you act purposefully according to the inherent nature of these things. Inner law to enjoy them. There are many creatures like you outside of you, whose strength is calculated like yours, and can only be maintained in the same way as you. You have to allow They enjoy their part as you enjoy yours. You respect what is theirs as theirs, and you treat with purpose what is yours as yours." -Me I should act in this way, and I should think in accordance with this action.I am therefore obliged to regard these things as subject to their own natural laws, which, though known to me, are independent of me; The presence.I have to believe in these laws, it is my business to study them, and the empty speculations, like the mist at sunrise, will dissipate.

In short, there is no simple existence for me that is independent of me, that I intuit only for the sake of intuition; everything that exists for me exists because it is related to me.But there is only one relation possible to me anywhere, and all other relations are but variations of this relation—that it is my mission to act morally.My world is the object and sphere of my duty and nothing else.For me there is no other world, or some other attribute of my world; all my powers and all my limited powers are insufficient to grasp the other world.It is only through this relationship that everything that exists to me can make its existence and reality feel to me, and only through this relationship can I grasp it. I have no power over another existence.

Does such a world as I imagined really exist?To this question I can only give the following definitive and unquestionable answer: I am sure that I do have these particular duties which appear to me as duties towards and in such objects; Imagine them in such a world of imagination, complete them.Even for a man who has never considered his inherent moral mission—if there is such a man—or who has considered this mission without making the slightest determination to be Nor can the world of his senses and his belief in the reality of this world arise, for the man who accomplishes it in a definite future, by any other means than from his conception of the moral world.Though he does not grasp this perceptual world by thinking of his duty.But he must take hold of the world by claiming his own rights.What he may never ask himself to do, he must ask others to do to him; and so, of course, he also has to conceive of the other as deliberate, free and independent, and independent of mere forces of nature, so long as the other can fulfill this requirement.In the use and enjoyment of the objects around him, although he sets no other aim at all than his enjoyment of them, he must at least claim this enjoyment as a right which must not be violated by others. The possession of this enjoyment; therefore, he also uses a moral concept to grasp the irrational perceptual world.

No man who exists consciously renounces these demands of respect for his reason, independence, and self-existence; demands which, if not connected with the recognition of the moral laws in his mind, are at least connected in his mind with seriousness, the removal of doubts, and Faith really matters.Only with a man who denies his inherent moral mission, denies your existence and the existence of the world of objects, for the purpose of merely testing the power of speculation, can you offend him with practical actions; you can Treat him the way you are, treat him as if he didn't exist or was just a piece of raw material—then he'll immediately forget his cynicism and get very angry with you; he'll Severely blame you for treating him like this, saying that you should neither oppose him like this; in this way, he will admit to you with practical actions, of course you can influence him, he exists in reality, and you also exist in reality , and there is also an intermediary through which you have an influence on him, and you are at least responsible to him.

Neither, therefore, the action of various imaginary things outside us, whose actual existence to us and our actual existence to them, is only so far as we already know them, nor our imagination and thinking. Empty reflections of fiction—and the products of our imagination do appear as such, as empty reflections—but a certainty about our freedom and power, about our actual actions, about human action. All consciousness of a reality existing outside of us is established by the necessary belief in laws, and this consciousness itself is nothing but belief, because this consciousness is based on belief, but it is a kind of belief derived from the above-mentioned necessary belief. Inevitable belief.We have to think that we are acting at all, that we ought to act in a certain way; There is absolutely nothing else beyond that range, and in any case it will not extend beyond that range.It is from the need for action that the awareness of the real world arises, not vice versa from the awareness of the world that produces the need for action.The need for action is prior, the awareness of the world is not prior but derived.We do not act because we want to know, but we know because we are bound to act; practical reason is the foundation of all reason.The laws of action are immediate certainties for rational beings.The world of rational beings is certain only because the laws of action are certain.We cannot deny these laws unless the whole world and ourselves are reduced to absolute nothingness.Only by our moral activity can we rise out of this nothingness and survive in the face of it.