the
rational impulsion with the experience of law--with the beginning of his
personality; and it is only when these two inclinations have come into
existence that the human type is realized. Up to that time, everything
takes place in man according to the law of necessity; but now the hand of
nature lets him go, and it is for him to keep upright humanity, which
nature places as a germ in his heart. And thus we see that directly the
two opposite and fundamental impulses exercise their influence in him,
both lose their constraint, and the autonomy of two necessities gives
birth to freedom.

LETTER XX.

That freedom is an active and not a passive principle results from its
very conception; but that liberty itself should be an effect of nature
(taking this word in its widest sense), and not the work of man, and
therefore that it can be favored or thwarted by natural means, is the
necessary consequence of that which precedes. It begins only when man is
complete, and when these two fundamental impulsions have been developed.
It will then be wanting whilst he is incomplete, and while one of these
impulsions is excluded, and it will be re-established by all that gives
back to man his integrity.

Thus it is possible, both with regard to the entire species as to the
individual, to remark the moment when man is yet incomplete, and when one
of the two exclusions acts solely in him. We know that man commences by
life simply, to end by form; that he is more of an individual than a
person, and that he starts from the limited or finite to approach the
infinite. The sensuous impulsion comes into play therefore before the
rational impulsion, because sensation precedes consciousness; and in this
priority of sensuous impulsion we find the key of the history of the
whole of human liberty.

There is a moment, in fact, when the instinct of life, not yet opposed to
the instinct of form, acts as nature and as necessity; when the sensuous
is a power because man has not begun; for even in man there can be no
other power than his will. But when man shall have attained to the power
of thought, reason, on the contrary, will be a power, and moral or
logical necessity will take the place of physical necessity. Sensuous
power must then be annihilated before the law which must govern it can be
established. It is not enough that something shall begin which as yet
was not; previously something must end which had begun. Man cannot pass
immedia