bject
to the influence and empire of the will, or which may be considered at
all events as being of such a kind that will might always have prevented
them, consequently phenomena for which the person and not instinct is
responsible. It is the office of instinct to watch with a blind zeal
over the interests of the senses; but it is the office of the person to
hold instinct in proper bounds, out of respect for the moral law.
Instinct in itself does not hold account of any law; but the person ought
to watch that instinct may not infringe in any way on the decrees of
reason. It is therefore evident that it is not for instinct alone to
determine unconditionally all the phenomena that take place in man in the
state of affection, and that on the contrary the will of man can place
limits to instinct. When instinct only determines all phenomena in man,
there is nothing more that can recall the person; there is only a
physical creature before you, and consequently an animal; for every
physical creature subject to the sway of instinct is nothing else.
Therefore, if you wish to represent the person itself, you must propose
to yourself in man certain phenomena that have been determined in
opposition to instinct, or at least that have not been determined by
instinct. That they have not been determined by instinct is sufficient
to refer them to a higher source, the moment we see that instinct would
no doubt have determined them in another way if its force had not been
broken by some obstacle.

We are now in a position to point out in what way the super-sensuous
element, the moral and independent force of man, his Ego in short, can be
represented in the phenomena of the affections. I understand that this
is possible if the parts which only obey physical nature, those where
will either disposes nothing at all, or only under certain circumstances,
betray the presence of suffering; and if those, on the contrary, that
escape the blind sway of instinct, that only obey physical nature, show
no trace, or only a very feeble trace, of suffering, and consequently
appear to have a certain degree of freedom. Now this want of harmony
between the features imprinted on animal nature in virtue of the laws of
physical necessity, and those determined with the spiritual and
independent faculty of man, is precisely the point by which that
super-sensuous principle is discovered in man capable of placing limits
to the effects produced by physical nature, an