This twofold labor or task, which consists in making the necessary pass
into reality in us and in making out of us reality subject to the law of
necessity, is urged upon us as a duty by two opposing forces, which are
justly styled impulsions or instincts, because they impel us to realize
their object. The first of these impulsions, which I shall call the
sensuous instinct, issues from the physical existence of man, or from
sensuous nature; and it is this instinct which tends to enclose him in
the limits of time, and to make of him a material being; I do not say to
give him matter, for to do that a certain free activity of the
personality would be necessary, which, receiving matter, distinguishes it
from the Ego, or what is permanent. By matter I only understand in this
place the change or reality that fills time. Consequently the instinct
requires that there should be change, and that time should contain
something. This simply filled state of time is named sensation, and it
is only in this state that physical existence manifests itself.
As all that is in time is successive, it follows by that fact alone that
something is: all the remainder is excluded. When one note on an
instrument is touched, among all those that it virtually offers, this
note alone is real. When man is actually modified, the infinite
possibility of all his modifications is limited to this single mode of
existence. Thus, then, the exclusive action of sensuous impulsion has
for its necessary consequence the narrowest limitation. In this state
man is only a unity of magnitude, a complete moment in time; or, to speak
more correctly, he is not, for his personality is suppressed as long as
sensation holds sway over him and carries time along with it.
This instinct extends its domains over the entire sphere of the finite in
man, and as form is only revealed in matter, and the absolute by means of
its limits, the total manifestation of human nature is connected on a
close analysis with the sensuous instinct. But though it is only this
instinct that awakens and develops what exists virtually in man, it is
nevertheless this very instinct which renders his perfection impossible.
It binds down to the world of sense by indestructible ties the spirit
that tends higher, and it calls back to the limits of the present,
abstraction which had its free development in the sphere of the infinite.
No doubt, thought can escape it for a moment, and a firm will
victoriously resist its exigencies: but soon compressed nature resumes
her rights to give an imperious reality to our existence, to give it
contents, substance, knowledge, and an aim for our activity.
The second impulsion, which may be named the formal instinct, issues from
the absolute existence of man, or from his rational nature, and tends to
set free, and bring harmony into the diversity of its manifestations, and
to maintain personality notwithstanding all the changes of state. As
this personality, being an absolute and indivisible unity, can never be
in contradiction with itself, as we are ourselves forever, this
impulsion, which tends to maintain personality, can never exact in one
time anything but what it exacts and requires forever. It therefore
decides for always what it decides now, and orders now what it orders
forever. Hence it embraces the whole series of times, or what comes to
the same thing, it suppresses time and change. It wishes the real to be
necessary and eternal, and it wishes the eternal and the necessary to be
real; in other terms, it tends to truth and justice.
If the sensuous instinct only produces accidents, the formal instinct
gives laws, laws for every judgment when it is a question of knowledge,
laws for every will when it is a question of action. Whether, therefore,
we recognize an object or conceive an objective value to a state of the
subject, whether we act in virtue of knowledge or make of the objective
the determining principle of our state; in both cases we withdraw this
state from the jurisdiction of time, and we attribute to it reality for
all men and for all time, that is, universality and necessity. Feeling
can only say: "That is true for this subject and at this moment," and
there may come another moment, another subject, which withdraws the
affirmation from the actual feeling. But when once thought pronounces
and says: "That is," it decides forever and ever, and the validity of its
decision is guaranteed by the personality itself, which defies all
change. Inclination can only say: "That is good for your individuality
and present necessity"; but the changing current of affairs will sweep
them away, and what you ardently desire to-day will form the object of
your aversion to-morrow. But when the moral feeling says: "That ought to
be," it decides forever. If you confess the truth because it is the
truth, and if you practise justice because it is justice, you have made
of a particular case the law of all possible cases, and treated one
moment of your life as eternity.
Accordingly, when the formal impulse holds sway and the pure object acts
in us, the being attains its highest expansion, all barriers disappear,
and from the unity of magnitude in which man was enclosed by a narrow
sensuousness, he rises to the unity of idea, which embraces and keeps
subject the entire sphere of phenomena. During this operation we are no
longer in time, but time is in us with its infinite succession. We are
no longer individuals but a species; the judgment of all spirits is
expressed by our own, and the choice of all hearts is represented by our
own act.