Take
it for granted that they are capable of proposing to themselves aims
independently of thee, by their own power. Never disturb the execution
of these, their designs, but further them rather, with all thy might.
Respect their liberty. Embrace with love their objects as thine
own." So must I act. And to such action shall, will, and must all my
thinking be directed, if I have but formed the purpose to obey the
voice of my conscience. Accordingly, I shall ever consider those
beings as beings subsisting for themselves, and forming and
accomplishing aims independently of me. From this viewpoint, I cannot
consider them in any other light; and the above-mentioned speculation
will vanish like an empty dream before my eyes. "I _think_ of them as
beings of my own species," said I just now; but strictly, it is not a
thought by which they are first represented to me as such. It is the
voice of conscience, the command: "Here restrain thy liberty,
here suppose and respect foreign aims." This it is which is first
translated into the thought: "Here is surely and truly, subsisting
of itself, a being like me." To consider them otherwise, I must first
deny the voice of my conscience in life and forget it in speculation.
There hover before me other phenomena which I do not consider as
beings like myself, but as irrational objects. Speculation finds it
easy to show how the conception of such objects develops itself purely
from my power of conception and its necessary modes of action.
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