I gather from a passage in his “Anthropology” that even in the case of Kant some incident in his actual earthly life preceded the “formation of his character.” The birth of the Kantian ethics, the noblest event in the history of the world, was the moment when for the first time the dazzling awful conception came to him, “I am responsible only to myself; I must follow none other; I must not forget myself even in my work; I am alone; I am free; I am lord of myself.”
“Two things fill my mind with ever renewed wonder and awe the more often and the deeper I dwell on them—the starry vault above me and the moral law within me. I must not look on them both as veiled in mystery or think that their majesty places them beyond me. I see them before me, and they are part of the consciousness of my existence. The first arises from my position in the outer world of the senses, and links me with the immeasurable space in which worlds and worlds and systems and systems, although in immeasurable time, have their ebbs and flows, their beginnings and ends. The second arises from my invisible self, my personality, and places me in a world that has true infinity, but which is evident only to the reason and with which I recognise myself as being bound, not accidentally as in the other case but in a universal and necessary union. On the one hand, the consciousness of an endless series of worlds destroys my sense of importance, making me only one of the animal creatures which must return its substance again to the planet (that, too, being no more than a point in space) from whence it came, after having been in some unknown way endowed with life for a brief space. The second point of view enhances my importance, makes me an intelligence, infinite and unconditioned through my personality, the moral law in which separates me from the animals and from the world of sense, removes me from the limits of time and space, and links me with infinity.”
The secret of the critique of practical reason is that man is alone in the world, in tremendous eternal isolation.
He has no object outside himself; lives for nothing else; he is far removed from being the slave of his wishes, of his abilities, of his necessities; he stands far above social ethics; he is alone.
Thus he becomes one and all; he has the law in him, and so he himself is the law, and no mere changing caprice. The desire is in him to be only the law, to be the law that is himself, without afterthought or forethought. This is the awful conclusion, he has no longer the sense that there can be duty for him. Nothing is superior to him, to the isolated absolute unity. But there are no alternatives for him; he must respond to his own categorical imperatives, absolutely, impartially. “Freedom,” he cries (for instance, Wagner, or Schopenhauer), “rest, peace from the enemy; peace, not this endless striving”; and he is terrified. Even in this wish for freedom there is cowardice; in the ignominious lament there is desertion as if he were too small for the fight. What is the use of it all, he cries to the universe; and is at once ashamed, for he is demanding happiness, and that his own burden should rest on other shoulders. Kant’s lonely man does not dance or laugh; he neither brawls nor makes merry; he feels no need to make a noise, because the universe is so silent around him. To acquiesce in his loneliness is the splendid supremacy of the Kantian.
CHAPTER VIII
THE “I” PROBLEM AND GENIUS
“In the beginning the world was nothing but the Âtman, in the form of a man. It looked around and saw nothing different to itself. Then it cried out once, ‘It is I.’ That is how the word ‘I’ came to be. That is why even at the present day, if any one is called, he answers, ‘It is I,’ and then recalls his other name, the one he bears.”—(Brihadâranyata-Upanishad.)
Many disputations about principles in psychology arise from individual characterological differences in the disputants. Thus, in the mode that I have already suggested, characterology might play an important part. When one person thinks to have discovered this, the other that, by introspection, characterology would have to show why the results in the one case should differ from those in the other, or, at least, to point out in what other respects the persons in question were unlike. I see no other possible way of clearing up the disputed points of psychology. Psychology is a science of experiences, and, therefore, it must proceed from the individual to the general, and not, as in the supra-individualistic laws of logic and ethics, proceed from the universal to the individual case. There is no such thing as an empirical general psychology; and it would be a mistake to approach such without having fully reckoned with differential psychology.
It is a great pity that psychology has been placed between philosophy and the analysis of perceptions. From whichever side psychologists approached the subject, they have always been assured of the general validity of their results. Perhaps even so fundamental a question as to whether or no perception itself implies an actual and spontaneous act of consciousness cannot be solved without a consideration of characterological differences.