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. [352]
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 [353]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.