e., I merely know
that they shall be, not how they shall be. I suppose a law of the
spiritual world, in which my mere will is one of the moving forces,
just as my hand is one of the moving forces in the material world.
That firmness of my confidence and the thought of this law of a
spiritual world are one and the same thing--not two thoughts of which
one is the consequence of the other, but precisely the same thought,
just as the certainty with which I count upon a certain motion, and
the thought of a mechanical law of Nature, are the same. The idea
of _Law_ expresses generally nothing else but the fixed, immovable
reliance of Reason on a proposition, and the impossibility of
supposing the contrary.
I assume such a law of a spiritual world, which my own will did not
enact, nor the will of any finite being, nor the will of all finite
beings together, but to which my will and the will of all finite
beings is subject.
* * * * *
Agreeably to what has now been advanced, the law of the supersensuous
world should be a _Will_.
A Will which acts purely and simply as will, by its own agency,
entirely without any instrument or sensuous medium of its efficacy;
which is absolutely, in itself, at once action and result; which
wills and it is done, which commands and it stands fast; in
which, accordingly, the demand of Reason to be absolutely free and
self-active is represented.
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