y will
does a new light arise upon my being and destination. Without this,
however much I may reflect, and however distinguished my mental
endowments, there is nothing but darkness in me and around me. The
reformation of the heart alone conducts to true wisdom. So then, let
my whole life be directed unrestrainedly toward this one end!

IV

My lawful will, simply as such, in and through itself, must
have consequences, certain and without exception. Every dutiful
determination of my will, although no act should flow from it, must
operate in another, to me incomprehensible, world; and, except this
dutiful determination of the will, nothing can take effect in that
world. What do I suppose when I suppose this? What do I take for
granted?

Evidently, a law, a rule absolutely and without exception valid,
according to which the dutiful will must have consequences. Just as in
the earthly world which environs me, I assume a law according to which
this ball, when impelled by my hand with this given force, in this
given direction, must necessarily move in such a direction, with a
determinate measure of rapidity, perhaps impel another ball with
this given degree of force by which the other ball moves on with a
determinate rapidity; and so on indefinitely. As in this case, with
the mere direction and movement of my hand, I know and comprehend all
the directions and movements which shall follow it, as certainly as if
they were already present and perceived by me; even so I comprise, in
my dutiful will, a series of necessary and infallible consequences
in the spiritual world, as if they were already present, only that I
cannot, as in the material world, determine them--i.e., I merely know
that they shall be, not how they shall be. I suppose a law of the
spiritual world, in which my mere will is one of the moving forces,
just as my hand is one of the moving forces in the material world.
That firmness of my confidence and the thought of this law of a
spiritual world are one and the same thing--not two thoughts of which
one is the consequence of the other, but precisely the same thought,
just as the certainty with which I count upon a certain motion, and
the thought of a mechanical law of Nature, are the same. The idea
of _Law_ expresses generally nothing else but the fixed, immovable
reliance of Reason on a proposition, and the impossibility of
supposing the contrary.

I assume such a law of a spiritual world, which my own wi