I cannot be driven; my philosophy then becomes altogether independent of all arbitrariness, and a product of stern necessity, i.e. in so far as necessity exists for free Reason; it becomes a product of practical necessity. I can not go beyond this stand-point, because conscience says I shall not go beyond it; and thus transcendental idealism shows itself up to be the only moral philosophy—the philosophy wherein speculation and moral law are intimately united. Conscience says: I shall start in my thinking from the pure Ego, and shall think it absolutely self-active; not as determined by the things, but as determining the things.
The conception of activity which becomes possible only through this intellectual contemplation of the self-active Ego, is the only one which unites both the worlds that exist for us—the sensuous and the intelligible world. Whatsoever is opposed to my activity—and I must oppose something to it, for I am finite—is the sensuous, and whatsoever is to arise through my activity is the intelligible (moral) world.
I should like to know how those who smile so contemptuously whenever the words “intellectual contemplation” are mentioned, think the consciousness of the moral law; or how they are enabled to entertain such conceptions as those of Virtue, of Right, &c., which they doubtless do entertain. According to them, there are only two contemplations a priori—Time and Space. They surely form these conceptions of Virtue, &c., in Time (the form of the inner sense), but they certainly do not hold them to be time itself, but merely a certain filling up of time. What is it, then, wherewith they fill up time, and get a basis for the construction of those conceptions? There is nothing left to them but Space; and hence their conceptions of Virtue, Right, &c., are perhaps quadrangular and circular; just as all the other conceptions which they construct (for instance, that of a tree or of an animal) are nothing but limitations of Space. But they do not conceive their Virtue and their Right in this manner. What, then, is the basis of their construction? If they attend properly, they will discover that this basis is activity in general, or freedom. Both of these conceptions of virtue and right are to them certain limitations of their general activity, exactly as their sensuous conceptions are limitations of space. How, then, do they arrive at this basis of their construction? We will hope that they have not derived activity from the dead permanency of matter, nor freedom from the mechanism of nature. They have obtained it, therefore, from immediate contemplation, and thus they confess a third contemplation besides their own two.
It is, therefore, by no means so unimportant, as it appears to be to some, whether philosophy starts from a fact or from a deed-act (i.e. from an activity which presupposes no object, but produces it itself, and in which, therefore, the acting is immediately deed). If philosophy starts from a fact, it places itself in the midst of being and finity, and will find it difficult to discover therefrom a road to the infinite and super-sensuous; but if it starts from a deed-act, it places itself at once in the point which unites both worlds and from which both can be overlooked at one glance.
[Translators frequently use the term “intuition” for what I have here called “contemplation”; “deed-act” is my rendering of “That-Handlung.” A. E. K.]
