minion, but under the power of Nature; and that it is not themselves, but this nature in them, which seeks the former, and flies from the latter with all its strength, without regard to whether it be, otherwise, good or evil. I know that being, once for all, what they are, they cannot act in any respect otherwise than as they do act, and I am very far from getting angry with necessity, or indulging in wrath against blind and unconscious Nature. In this indeed lies their guilt and their unworthiness, that they are what they are; and that, in place of being free and independent, they have resigned themselves to the current of natural impulse.
It is this alone which could excite my indignation; but here I should fall into absolute absurdity. I cannot call them to account for their want of freedom, without first attributing to them the power of making themselves free. I wish to be angry with them, and find no object for my wrath. What they actually are, does not deserve my anger; what might deserve it, they are not, and they would not deserve it, if they were. My displeasure would strike an impalpable nonentity. I must indeed always treat them, and address them, as if they were what I well know they are not; I must always suppose in them that whereby alone I can approach them, and communicate with them. Duty commands me to act towards them according to a conception of them, the opposite of that which I arrive at by contemplating them. And thus it may certainly happen, that I turn towards them with a noble indignation, as if they were free, in order to arouse within them a similar indignation against themselves,—an indignation which in my own heart I cannot
