These
are represented in Kant by the third as well as the fourth antimony of
freedom.
On the other hand, in my philosophy the plain recognition of the
strictly necessary character of all action is in accordance with the
doctrine that what manifests itself even in the organic and irrational
world is _will_. If this were not so, the necessity under which
irrational beings obviously act would place their action in conflict
with will; if, I mean, there were really such a thing as the freedom
of individual action, and this were not as strictly necessitated as
every other kind of action. But, as I have just shown, it is this same
doctrine of the necessary character of all acts of will which makes it
needful to regard a man's existence and being as itself the work of
his freedom, and consequently of his will. The will, therefore, must
be self-existent; it must possess so-called _a-se-ity_. Under the
opposite supposition all responsibility, as I have shown, would be at
an end, and the moral like the physical world would be a mere machine,
set in motion for the amusement of its manufacturer placed somewhere
outside of it. So it is that truths hang together, and mutually
advance and complete one another; whereas error gets jostled at every
corner.
What kind of influence it is that _moral instruction_ may exercise
on conduct, and what are the limits of that influence, are questions
which I have sufficiently examined in the twentieth section of my
treatise on the _Foundation of Morality_.
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