In order to be at one with ourselves, we should have to refuse obedience to that law, and to suppress it as a perverse and foolish fanaticism.
No!—I will not refuse obedience to the law of duty;—as surely as I live and am, I will obey, absolutely because it commands. This resolution shall be first and highest in my mind; that by which everything else is determined, but which is itself determined by nothing else;—this shall be the innermost principle of my spiritual life.
But, as a reasonable being, before whom a purpose must be set solely by its own will and determination, it is impossible for me to act without a motive and without an end. If this obedience is to be recognised by me as a reasonable service,—if the voice which demands this obedience be really that of the creative reason within me, and not a mere fanciful enthusiasm, invented by my own imagination, or communicated to me somehow from without,—this obedience must have some consequences, must serve some end. It is evident that it does not serve the purpose of the world of sense;—there must, therefore, be a super-sensual world, whose purposes it may promote.
The mist of delusion clears away from before my sight! I receive a new organ, and a new world opens before me. It is disclosed to me only by the law of reason, and answers only to that law in my spirit. I apprehend this world,—limited as I am by my sensuous view, I must thus name the unnameable—I
