but of a process which _either_ has its ethical cause, and
then in its ethical value _no_ natural cause, _or_ which even in its
ethical motives belongs to the causal connection of empirical nature with
its indestructible chain of natural causes and natural effects. Now at this
point the scientist, as such, is always exposed to the danger of denying
the first part of our dilemma and affirming the second. For, in moral
action, something which is elevated above nature and its causal connection
always makes its way into this causal connection of nature, and with its
action and the effects of this action wholly enters into this connection:
and natural science which has to deal particularly with this causal
connection of nature and with it alone, is on that account nevertheless
always tempted to explain everything that it sees coming into this
connection, in _all_ its causes (even in those which no longer belong to
this natural causal connection), out of it. It is therefore always tempted
to trace even ethical action which, with its deeds, makes its way and
enters into this causal connection, but which with its motives stands above
it, as to its motives, back to a natural causal connection; and thus to
contest the independence of ethical motives and their principles--which
independence is not dependent on nature, but, on the contrary, frequently
contradicts it. Ethics must adhere to the fact that the ethical
determination of the will has its origin not in a natural condition, but in
the ethical centre of personality; although all the conditions under which
the ethical motive {389} originates and acts, belong completely to the
causal connection of natural life, in which man himself stands as to the
whole natural part of his being. The ethical realm stands above the natural
realm, and shows its superiority partly by the category of moral demands
whose imperativeness cannot have grown out of the mechanical necessity of
the natural law, because it often enough contradicts the latter and carries
out its demands in opposition to it, partly by the consciousness of
individual responsibility which cannot be got rid of even by him who
mentally establishes a system of determinism that denies responsibility,
partly by the voice of the injured conscience which cannot merely be the
dislike of a dissatisfied higher natural impulse, when it can speak of the
same action for years, even for an entire human life, and even, where man
has counterbal