If abstraction rises to as great an elevation as possible, it arrives at
two primary ideas, before which it is obliged to stop and to recognize
its limits. It distinguishes in man something that continues, and
something that changes incessantly. That which continues it names his
person; that which changes his position, his condition.
The person and the condition, I and my determinations, which we
represent as one and the same thing in the necessary being, are
eternally distinct in the finite being. Notwithstanding all continuance
in the person, the condition changes; in spite of all change of
condition the person remains. We pass from rest to activity, from
emotion to indifference, from assent to contradiction, but we are always
_we ourselves_, and what immediately springs from _ourselves_ remains.
It is only in the absolute subject that all his determinations continue
with his personality. All that Divinity is, it is because it is so;
consequently it is eternally what it is, because it is eternal.
As the person and the condition are distinct in man, because he is a
finite being, the condition cannot be founded on the person, nor the
person on the condition. Admitting the second case, the person would
have to change; and in the former case, the condition would have to
continue. Thus in either supposition, either the personality or the
quality of a finite being would necessarily cease. It is not because we
think, feel, and will that we are; it is not because we are that we
think, feel, and will. We are because we are. We feel, think, and will
because there is out of us something that is not ourselves.
Consequently the person must have its principle of existence in itself,
because the permanent cannot be derived from the changeable, and thus we
should be at once in possession of the idea of the absolute being,
founded on itself; that is to say, of the _idea of freedom_. The
condition must have a foundation, and as it is not through the person,
and is not therefore absolute, it must be a _sequence_ and a _result_;
and thus, in the second place, we should have arrived at the condition
of every independent being, of everything in the process of becoming
something else: that is, of the idea of _time_. “Time is the necessary
condition of all processes, of becoming (Werden);” this is an identical
proposition, for it says nothing but this: “That something may follow,
there must be a succession.”
The person which manifested itself in the eternally continuing Ego, or I
myself, and only in him, cannot become something or begin in time,
because it is much rather time that must begin with him, because the
permanent must serve as basis to the changeable. That change may take
place, something must change; this something cannot therefore be the
change itself. When we say the flower opens and fades, we make of this
flower a permanent being in the midst of this transformation; we lend
it, in some sort, a personality, in which these two conditions are
manifested. It cannot be objected that man is born, and becomes
something; for man is not only a person simply, but he is a person
finding himself in a determinate condition. Now our determinate state of
condition springs up in time, and it is thus that man, as a phenomenon
or appearance, must have a beginning, though in him pure intelligence is
eternal. Without time, that is, without a becoming, he would not be a
determinate being; his personality would exist virtually no doubt, but
not in action. It is not by the succession of its perceptions that the
immutable Ego or person manifests himself to himself.
Thus, therefore, the matter of activity, or reality, that the supreme
intelligence draws from its own being, must be _received_ by man; and he
does, in fact, receive it, through the medium of perception, as
something which is outside him in space, and which changes in him in
time. This matter which changes in him is always accompanied by the Ego,
the personality, that never changes; and the rule prescribed for man by
his rational nature is to remain immutably _himself_ in the midst of
change, to refer all perceptions to experience, that is, to the unity of
knowledge, and to make of each of its manifestations of its modes in
time the law of all time. The matter only exists in as far as it
changes: _he_, his personality, only exists in as far as he does not
change. Consequently, represented in his perfection, man would be the
permanent unity, which remains always the same, among the waves of
change.
Now, although an infinite being, a divinity could not _become_ (or be
subject to time), still a tendency ought to be named divine which has
for its infinite end the most characteristic attribute of the divinity;
the absolute manifestation of power—the reality of all the possible—and
the absolute unity of the manifestation (the necessity of all reality).
It cannot be disputed that man bears within himself, in his personality,
a predisposition for divinity. The way to divinity—if the word “way” can
be applied to what never leads to its end—is open to him in every
_direction_.
Considered in itself, and independently of all sensuous matter, his
personality is nothing but the pure virtuality of a possible infinite
manifestation; and so long as there is neither intuition nor feeling, it
is nothing more than a form, an empty power. Considered in itself, and
independently of all spontaneous activity of the mind, sensuousness can
only make a material man; without it, it is a pure form; but it cannot
in any way establish a union between matter and it. So long as he only
feels, wishes, and acts under the influence of desire, he is nothing
more than the world, if by this word we point out only the formless
contents of time. Without doubt, it is only his sensuousness that makes
his strength pass into efficacious acts, but it is his personality alone
that makes this activity his own. Thus, that he may not only be a world,
he must give form to matter, and in order not to be a mere form, he must
give reality to the virtuality that he bears in him. He gives matter to
form by creating time, and by opposing the immutable to change, the
diversity of the world to the eternal unity of the Ego. He gives a form
to matter by again suppressing time, by maintaining permanence in
change, and by placing the diversity of the world under the unity of the
Ego.
Now from this source issue for man two opposite exigencies, the two
fundamental laws of sensuous-rational nature. The first has for its
object absolute _reality_; it must make a world of what is only form,
manifest all that in it is only a force. The second law has for its
object absolute _formality_; it must destroy in him all that is only
world, and carry out harmony in all changes. In other terms, he must
manifest all that is internal, and give form to all that is external.
Considered in its most lofty accomplishment, this twofold labor brings
back to the idea of humanity, which was my starting-point.