ulsions, or only satisfies them one
after the other. For as long as he only feels, his absolute personality
and existence remain a mystery to him, and as long as he only thinks, his
condition or existence in time escapes him. But if there were cases in
which he could have at once this twofold experience in which he would
have the consciousness of his freedom and the feeling of his existence
together, in which he would simultaneously feel as matter and know
himself as spirit, in such cases, and in such only, would he have a
complete intuition of his humanity, and the object that would procure him
this intuition would be a symbol of his accomplished destiny and
consequently serve to express the infinite to him--since this destination
can only be fulfilled in the fulness of time.

Presuming that cases of this kind could present themselves in experience,
they would awake in him a new impulsion, which, precisely because the
other two impulsions would co-operate in it, would be opposed to each of
them taken in isolation, and might, with good grounds, be taken for a new
impulsion. The sensuous impulsion requires that there should be change,
that time should have contents; the formal impulsion requires that time
should be suppressed, that there should be no change. Consequently, the
impulsion in which both of the others act in concert--allow me to call it
the instinct of play, till I explain the term--the instinct of play would
have as its object to suppress time in time, to conciliate the state of
transition or becoming with the absolute being, change with identity.

The sensuous instinct wishes to be determined, it wishes to receive an
object; the formal instinct wishes to determine itself, it wishes to
produce an object. Therefore the instinct of play will endeavor to
receive as it would itself have produced, and to produce as it aspires to
receive.

The sensuous impulsion excludes from its subject all autonomy and
freedom; the formal impulsion excludes all dependence and passivity. But
the exclusion of freedom is physical necessity; the exclusion of
passivity is moral necessity. Thus the two impulsions subdue the mind:
the former to the laws of nature, the latter to the laws of reason. It
results from this that the instinct of play, which unites the double
action of the two other instincts, will content the mind at once morally
and physically. Hence, as it suppresses all that is contingent, it will
also suppress all coerc