ess, so also with self-consciousness, something new
always comes into existence--a higher category of being, different from the
merely material. The first is the form of being of the animal world; the
latter that of mankind.

It is exactly the same with the first appearance of voluntary movement, and
again with that of free moral self-determination. The reaction of the
sentient subject upon his sensations is something qualitatively different
from the purely mechanical and physical action and {116} reaction of pure
matter; although, in order to understand the possibility of a sensation as
well as of a voluntary movement, we must admit that the physical qualities
of matter must be such as to afford a basis and condition for sentient and
reacting beings. That reaction is the reaction of something immaterial upon
the material, even if it is entirely caused by the material and bound to
the material. Now, with free moral self-determination a new subject comes
into existence and activity in the individual, which makes that subject,
reacting upon mere sensations and ideas, its object, and, as a new
immaterial subjective unity, acts determiningly upon that subject which has
just become object. This new subject, considered from the side of its
receptivity, we call _self-consciousness_; from the side of its
spontaneity, _free moral self-determination_. Whether we consider this
freedom predetermined or not, does not at all alter the described fact and
the qualitative difference between the form of human moral agency and that
of purely animal spontaneity. For even those advocating determination must
admit that the morally acting subject distinguishes itself from its object,
and does not take its motives to action from the material and from the
instinctive life which is bound to the sensual and dependent on it.

Now it is true that all these circumstances in organized individuals which
serve self-consciousness and free moral self-determination as their
condition, presupposition, and basis, all the dispositions of the soul and
the manifestations of life found in the animal world, will be worthy of the
closest attention even on this account: because they form the basis, the
condition, and (if self-consciousness and freedom are once present) an
essential {117} part of the contents and object of self-consciousness and
moral self-determination. But where the origin of man is discussed, the
central point of the investigation is no longer th