able, and the source and standard of all else that is reasonable; that it is not modelled upon any other thing whatever, but that all other things must, on the contrary, model themselves upon it, and be dependent upon it,—a conviction which also I cannot arrive at from without, but can only attain by inward experience, by means of the unhesitating and immovable assent which I freely accord to this demand:—this was the second step of my thought. And from these two terms I have attained to faith in a super-sensual Eternal World. If I abandon the former, the latter falls to the ground. If it were true,—as many say it is, assuming it without farther proof as self-evident, and extolling it as the highest summit of human wisdom,—that all human virtue must have before it a certain definite external object, and that it must first be assured of the possibility of attaining this object, before it can act, and before it can become virtue; that, consequently, reason by no means contains within itself the principle and the standard of its own activity, but must receive this standard from without, through contemplation of an external world;—if this were true, then might the ultimate end of our existence be accomplished here below; human nature might be completely developed and exhausted by our earthly vocation, and we should have no rational ground for raising our thoughts above the present life.
But every thinker who has anywhere acquired those first principles even historically, perhaps by a mere love of the new and unusual, and who is able to prosecute a correct course of reasoning from them, might speak and teach as I have now spoken to myself. He
