As in the present life it is only from the command of conscience to follow a certain course of action that there arises our conception of a certain purpose in this action, and from this our whole intuitive perception of a world of sense;—so in the future, upon a similar, but now to us wholly inconceivable command, will be founded our conception of the immediate purpose of that life, and upon this, again, our intuitive perception of a world in which we shall set out from the consequences of our virtuous will in the present life. The present world exists for us only through the law of duty; the other will be revealed to us, in a similar manner, through another command of duty; for in no other manner can a world exist to any reasonable being.
This, then, is my whole sublime vocation, my true nature. I am a member of two orders:—the one purely spiritual, in which I rule by my will alone; the other sensuous, in which I operate by my action. The whole end of reason is pure activity, absolutely by itself alone, having no need of any instrument out of itself,—independence of everything which is not reason,—absolute freedom. The will is the living principle of reason,—is itself reason, when purely and simply apprehended; that reason is active by itself alone, means, that pure will, merely as such, operates and rules. Immediately and wholly in this purely spiritual order lives only the Infinite Reason. The finite reason—which does not itself constitute the world of reason, but is only one of its many members,—lives necessarily at the same time in a sensuous order; that is to say,
