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128 I do not regard as beings like myself, but as things irrational. Speculation finds no difficulty in showing how the conception of such things is developed solely from my own presentative faculty, and its necessary modes of activity. But I apprehend these things, also, through want, desire, and enjoyment. Not by the mental conception, but by hunger, thirst, and their satisfaction, does anything become for me food and drink. I am necessitated to believe in the reality of that which threatens my sensuous existence, or in that which alone is able to maintain it. Conscience enters the field in order that it may at once sanctify and restrain this natural impulse. “Thou shalt maintain, exercise, and strengthen thyself and thy physical powers, for they have been counted upon in the plans of reason. But thou canst only maintain them by using them in a legitimate manner, comformable to the inward nature of such things. There are also, besides thee, many other beings like thyself, whose powers have been counted upon like thine own, and can only be maintained in the same way as thine own. Concede to them the same privilege that has been allowed to thee. Respect what belongs to them, as their possession;—use what belongs to thee, legitimately as thine own.” Thus ought I to act,—according to this course of action must I think. I am compelled to regard these things as standing under their own natural laws, independent of, though perceivable by, me; and therefore to ascribe to them an independent existence. I am compelled to believe in such laws; the task of investigating them is set before me, and that empty speculation vanishes like a mist when the genial sun appears.

In short, there is for me absolutely no such thing as