Page:Vocation of Man (1848).djvu/169

Rh duty, although no action should follow it, shall operate in another, to me incomprehensible, world, in which nothing but this moral determination of the will shall possess efficient activity. What is it that is assumed in this conception?

Obviously a Law; a rule absolutely without exception, according to which a will determined by duty must have consequences; just as in the material world which surrounds me I assume a law according to which this ball, when thrown by my hand with this particular force, in this particular direction, necessarily moves in such a direction with a certain degree of velocity,—perhaps strikes another ball with a certain amount of force, which in its turn moves on with a certain velocity,—and so on. As here, in the mere direction and motion of my hand, I already perceive and apprehend all the consequent directions and movements, with the same certainty as if they were already present before me; even so do I embrace by means of my virtuous will a series of necessary and inevitable consequences in the spiritual world, as if they were already present before me; only that I cannot define them as I do those in the material world,—that is, I only know that they must be, but not how they shall be;—and even in doing this, I conceive of a Law of the spiritual world, in which my pure will is one of the moving forces, as my hand is one of the moving forces of the material world. My own firm confidence in these results, and the conception of this law of the spiritual world, are one and the same;—they are not two thoughts, one of which arises by means of the other, but they are entirely the same thought; just as the confidence with which I calculate on a certain motion in a material body,