ason, and this is a point that does not seem always to have
occurred to those who only look upon the mind as itself acting when its
acts are in harmony with reason, and who declare it passive when its acts
contradict reason.

Arrived at its development, each of these two fundamental impulsions
tends of necessity and by its nature to satisfy itself; but precisely
because each of them has a necessary tendency, and both nevertheless have
an opposite tendency, this twofold constraint mutually destroys itself,
and the will preserves an entire freedom between them both. It is
therefore the will that conducts itself like a power--as the basis of
reality--with respect to both these impulses; but neither of them can by
itself act as a power with respect to the other. A violent man, by his
positive tendency to justice, which never fails in him, is turned away
from injustice; nor can a temptation of pleasure, however strong, make a
strong character violate its principles. There is in man no other power
than his will; and death alone, which destroys man, or some privation of
self-consciousness, is the only thing that can rob man of his internal
freedom.

An external necessity determines our condition, our existence in time, by
means of the sensuous. The latter is quite involuntary, and directly it
is produced in us we are necessarily passive. In the same manner an
internal necessity awakens our personality in connection with sensations,
and by its antagonism with them; for consciousness cannot depend on the
will, which presupposes it. This primitive manifestation of personality
is no more a merit to us than its privation is a defect in us. Reason
can only be required in a being who is self-conscious, for reason is an
absolute consecutiveness and universality of consciousness; before this
is the case he is not a man, nor can any act of humanity be expected from
him. The metaphysician can no more explain the limitation imposed by
sensation on a free and autonomous mind than the natural philosopher can
understand the infinite, which is revealed in consciousness in connection
with these limits. Neither abstraction nor experience can bring us back
to the source whence issue our ideas of necessity and of universality:
this source is concealed in its origin in time from the observer, and its
super-sensuous origin from the researches of the metaphysician. But, to
sum up in a few words, consciousness is there, and, together with its
immuta