him; that he is, and that thou art,—that there is a medium by which thou canst influence him, and that thou, at least, hast duties to perform towards him.
Thus, it is not the operation of supposed external objects, which indeed exist for us, and we for them, only in so far as we already know of them; and just as little an empty vision evoked by our own imagination and thought, the products of which must, like itself, be mere empty pictures;—it is not these, but the necessary faith in our own freedom and power, in our own real activity and in the definite laws of human action, which lies at the root of all our consciousness of a reality external to ourselves;—a consciousness which is itself but faith, since it is founded on another faith, of which however it is a necessary consequence. We are compelled to believe that we act, and that we ought to act in a certain manner; we are compelled to assume a certain sphere for this action; this sphere is the real, actually present world, such as we find it;—and on the other hand, the world is absolutely nothing more than this sphere, and cannot, in any other way, extend itself beyond it. From this necessity of action proceeds the consciousness of the actual world; and not the reverse way, from the consciousness of the actual world the necessity of action:—this, not that, is the first; the former is derived from the latter. We do not act because we know, but we know because we are called upon to act:—the practical reason is the root of all reason. The laws of action for rational beings are immediately certain; their world is only certain through that previous certainty. We cannot deny these laws without plunging the world, and ourselves with it, into absolute annihilation;—we raise ourselves from
