fore me in futurity, and place myself far above them. I become the sole source of all my own being and its phenomena; and, henceforth, unconditioned by any thing without me, I have life in myself. My will, which is directed by no foreign agency in the order of the super-sensual world, but by myself alone, is this source of true life, and of eternity.
But it is my will alone which is this source of true life, and of eternity;—only by recognising this will as the peculiar seat of moral goodness, and by actually raising it thereto, do I obtain the assurance and the possession of that super-sensual world.
Without respect to any conceivable or visible object, without inquiry as to whether my will may be followed by any other result than the mere volition,—I must will in accordance with the moral law. My will stands alone, apart from all that is not itself, and is its own world merely by itself and for itself; not only as being itself an absolutely first, primary and original power, without any preceding influence by which it may be governed, but also as being followed by no conceivable or comprehensible result, or second step in the series, by which its activity might be brought under the dominion of a foreign law. Did there proceed from it any second, and from this again a third result, and so forth, in any conceivable sensuous world opposed to the spiritual world, then would its strength be broken by the resistance it would encounter from the independent elements of such a world which it would set in motion; the mode of its activity would no longer exactly correspond to the purpose expressed in the volition; and the will would no longer remain free, but be partly limited by the peculiar laws of its hetero-
