understand why
the one infinite ego (the universal life or the Deity, as Fichte puts it in
his later works) divides into the many empirical egos or individuals, why
it does not carry out its plan immediately, but through finite spirits as
its organs. Action is possible only under the form of the individual, only
in individuals are consciousness and morality possible. Without resistance,
no action; without conflict, no morality. Individuality, it is true, is to
be overcome and destroyed in moral endeavor; but in order to this it must
have existed. Virtue is a conquest over external _and internal_ nature.

A gradation of practical functions corresponding to the series of
theoretical activities leads from feeling and striving (longing and
desire) through the system of impulses (the impulse to representation or
reflection, to production, to satisfaction) up to moral will or the impulse
to harmony with self, which stands opposed to the natural impulses as the
categorical imperative. The practical ego mediates between the theoretical
and the absolute ego. The ego ought to be infinite and self-dependent, but
finds itself finite and dependent on a non-ego--a contradiction which is
resolved by the ego becoming practical, by the fact that in ever increasing
measure it subdues nature to itself, and by such increasing extension
of the boundary draws nearer and ever nearer to the realization of its
destination, to become absolute ego.

%2. The Science of Ethics and of Right.%

The moral law demands the control of the sensuous impulse by the pure
impulse. If the former aims at comfortable ease and enjoyment, the
latter is directed toward satisfaction with one's self, to endeavor and
self-dependence. (Enjoyment is inevitable, it is true, as satisfaction
where any impulse whatever is carried out; only it must not form the end
of action.) Morality is activity for its own sake, the radical evil--from
which only a miracle can deliver us, but a miracle which we must ourselves
perform--is inertness, lack of will to rise above the natural
determinateness of the impulse of self-preservation to the clear
consciousness of duty and of freedom. For the moral man there is no
resting; each end attained becomes for him the impulse to renewed endeavor,
each task fulfilled leads him to a fresh one. Become self-dependent, act
autonomously, make thyself free; let every action have a place in a series,
in the continuation of which the ego must become