If he does not comprehend it through the idea of his
duties, he certainly does so through the requisition of his rights.
What he does not require of himself he yet requires of others, in
relation to himself--that they treat him with care and consideration,
agreeably to his nature, not as an irrational thing, but as a free and
self-subsisting being. And so he is constrained, in order that they
may comply with this demand, to think of them also as rational, free,
self-subsisting, and independent of the mere force of Nature. And even
though he should never propose to himself any other aim in the use and
fruition of the objects which surround him than that of enjoying them,
he still demands this enjoyment as a right, of which others must leave
him in undisturbed possession. Accordingly, he comprehends even the
irrational world of the senses through a moral idea. No one who lives
a conscious life can renounce these claims to be respected as rational
and self-subsisting. And with these claims at least there is connected
in his soul a seriousness, an abandonment of doubt, a belief in
a reality, if not with the acknowledgment of a moral law in
his innermost being. Do but assail him who denies his own moral
destination and your existence and the existence of a corporeal
world, except in the way of experiment, to try what speculation can
do--assail him actively, carry his principles into life, and act as if
he either did not exist, or as if he were a piece of rude matter, and
he will soon forget the joke; he will become seriously angry with you,
he will seriously reprove you for treating him so, and maintain that
you ought not and must not do so to him; and, in this way, he will
practically admit that you really possess the power of acting upon
him, that he exists, that you exist, and that there exists _a medium
through which you act upon him_; and that you have at least duties
toward him.
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