The aim of the preceding discussions has been to throw light on the
relation of our personality, as knower, to the objective world. What
does it signify for us to possess knowledge and science? This was
the question to which we sought the answer.
We have seen that it is just in our knowing that the innermost kernel
of the world manifestly reveals itself. The harmony, subject to law,
which reigns throughout the whole world, reveals itself precisely in
human cognition.
It is, therefore, part of the destiny of man to elevate the fundamental
laws of the world, which do indeed regulate the whole of existence
but which would never become existent in themselves, into the realm
of realities which appear. This precisely is the essential nature
of knowledge that in it the world-ground is made manifest which in
the object-world can never be discovered. Knowing is--metaphorically
speaking--a continual merging of one's life into the world-ground.
Such a view is bound to throw light also on our practical attitude
towards life.
Our conduct is, in its whole character, determined by our moral
ideals. These are the ideas we have of our tasks in life, or, in other
words, of the ends which we set ourselves to achieve by our action.
Our conduct is a part of the total world-process. Consequently, it,
too, is subject to the universal laws which regulate this process.
Now, every event in the universe has two sides which must be
distinguished: its external sequence in time and space, and its
internal conformity to law.
The apprehension of this conformity of human conduct to law is but
a special case of knowledge. Hence, the conclusions at which we have
arrived concerning the nature of knowledge must apply to this sort of
knowledge, too. To apprehend oneself as a person who acts is to possess
the relevant laws of conduct, i.e., the moral concepts and ideals, in
the form of knowledge. It is this knowledge of the conformity of our
conduct to law which makes our conduct truly ours. For, in that case,
the conformity is given, not as external to the object in which the
action appears, but as the very substance of the object engaged in
living activity. The "object," here, is our own Ego. If the Ego has
with its knowledge really penetrated the essential nature of conduct,
then it feels that it is thereby master of its conduct. Short of this,
the laws of conduct confront us as something external. They master
us. What we achieve, we achieve under the compulsion which they wield
over us. But this compulsion ceases, as soon as their alien character
has been transformed into the Ego's very own activity. Thereafter, the
law no longer rules over us, but rules in us over the actions which
issue from our Ego. To perform an act in obedience to a law which is
external to the agent is to be unfree. To perform it in obedience to
the agent's own law is to be free. To gain knowledge of the laws of
one's own conduct is to become conscious of one's freedom. The process
of cognition is, thus, according to our arguments, the process of
the development of freedom.
Not all human conduct has this character. There are many cases in
which we do not know the laws of our conduct. This part of our conduct
is the unfree part of our activity. Over against it stands the part
the laws of which we make completely our own. This is the realm of
freedom. It is only in so far as our life falls into this realm that
it can be called moral. To transform the actions which are unfree
into actions which are free--this is the task of self-development for
every individual, this is likewise the task of the whole human race.
Thus, the most important problem for all human thinking is to conceive
man as a personality grounded upon itself and free.