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Page 29
It seems then as if the moral law, that is, the principle of
autonomy of the will, were properly speaking only presupposed in the
idea of freedom, and as if we could not prove its reality and
objective necessity independently. In that case we should still have
gained something considerable by at least determining the true
principle more exactly than had previously been done; but as regards
its validity and the practical necessity of subjecting oneself to
it, we should not have advanced a step. For if we were asked why the
universal validity of our maxim as a law must be the condition
restricting our actions, and on what we ground the worth which we
assign to this manner of acting- a worth so great that there cannot be
any higher interest; and if we were asked further how it happens
that it is by this alone a man believes he feels his own personal
worth, in comparison with which that of an agreeable or disagreeable
condition is to be regarded as nothing, to these questions we could
give no satisfactory answer.
We find indeed sometimes that we can take an interest in a
personal quality which does not involve any interest of external
condition, provided this quality makes us capable of participating
in the condition in case reason were to effect the allotment; that
is to say, the mere being worthy of happiness can interest of itself
even without the motive of participating in this happiness. This
judgement, however, is in fact only the effect of the importance of
the moral law which we before presupposed (when by the idea of freedom
we detach ourselves from every empirical interest); but that we
ought to detach ourselves from these interests, i.e., to consider
ourselves as free in action and yet as subject to certain laws, so
as to find a worth simply in our own person which can compensate us
for the loss of everything that gives worth to our condition; this
we are not yet able to discern in this way, nor do we see how it is
possible so to act- in other words, whence the moral law derives its
obligation.
It must be freely admitted that there is a sort of circle here
from which it seems impossible to escape. In the order of efficient
causes we assume ourselves free, in order that in the order of ends we
may conceive ourselves as subject to moral laws: and we afterwards
conceive ourselves as subject to these laws, because we have
attributed to ourselves freedom of will: for freedom and
self-legislation of will are both autonomy and, therefore, are
reciprocal conceptions, and for this very reason one must not be
used to explain the other or give the reason of it, but at most only
logical purposes to reduce apparently different notions of the same
object to one single concept (as we reduce different fractions of
the same value to the lowest terms).
One resource remains to us, namely, to inquire whether we do not
occupy different points of view when by means of freedom we think
ourselves as causes efficient a priori, and when we form our
conception of ourselves from our actions as effects which we see
before our eyes.
It is a remark which needs no subtle reflection to make, but which
we may assume that even the commonest understanding can make, although
it be after its fashion by an obscure discernment of judgement which
it calls feeling, that all the "ideas" that come to us involuntarily
(as those of the senses) do not enable us to know objects otherwise
than as they affect us; so that what they may be in themselves remains
unknown to us, and consequently that as regards "ideas" of this kind
even with the closest attention and clearness that the understanding
can apply to them, we can by them only attain to the knowledge of
appearances, never to that of things in themselves. As soon as this
distinction has once been made (perhaps merely in consequence of the
difference observed between the ideas given us from without, and in
which we are passive, and those that we produce simply from ourselves,
and in which we show our own activity), then it follows of itself that
we must admit and assume behind the appearance something else that
is not an appearance, namely, the things in themselves; although we
must admit that as they can never be known to us except as they affect
us, we can come no nearer to them, nor can we ever know what they
are in themselves. This must furnish a distinction, however crude,
between a world of sense and the world of understanding, of which
the former may be different according to the difference of the
sensuous impressions in various observers, while the second which is
its basis always remains the same, Even as to himself, a man cannot
pretend to know what he is in himself from the knowledge he has by
internal sensation. For as he does not as it were create himself,
and does not come by the conception of himself a priori but
empirically, it naturally follows that he can obtain his knowledge
even of himself only by the inner sense and, consequently, only
through the appearances of his nature and the way in which his
consciousness is affected. At the same time beyond these
characteristics of his own subject, made up of mere appearances, he
must necessarily suppose something else as their basis, namely, his
ego, whatever its characteristics in itself may be. Thus in respect to
mere perception and receptivity of sensations he must reckon himself
as belonging to the world of sense; but in respect of whatever there
may be of pure activity in him (that which reaches consciousness
immediately and not through affecting the senses), he must reckon
himself as belonging to the intellectual world, of which, however,
he has no further knowledge. To such a conclusion the reflecting man
must come with respect to all the things which can be presented to
him: it is probably to be met with even in persons of the commonest
understanding, who, as is well known, are very much inclined to
suppose behind the objects of the senses something else invisible
and acting of itself. They spoil it, however, by presently
sensualizing this invisible again; that is to say, wanting to make
it an object of intuition, so that they do not become a whit the
wiser.
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