, and if a
sacrifice is necessary it is the moral nature, and not the sensuous
nature, that will make it. If, on the contrary, it is reason itself
which has made the inclination pass to the side of duty (which is the
case in the fine character), and which has only confided the rudder to
the sensuous nature, it will be always able to retake it as soon as the
instinct should misuse its full powers. Thus the virtue of temperament
in the affective movements falls back to the state of simple production
of nature, whilst the noble soul passes to heroism and rises to the rank
of pure intelligence.

The rule over the instincts by moral force is the emancipation of mind,
and the expression by which this independence presents itself to the eyes
in the world of phenomena is what is called dignity.

To consider this rigorously: the moral force in man is susceptible of no
representation, for the super-sensuous could not explain itself by a
phenomenon that falls under the sense; but it can be represented
indirectly to the mind by sensuous signs, and this is actually the case
with dignity in the configuration of man.

When the instinct of nature is excited, it is accompanied just as the
heart in its moral emotions is, by certain movements of the body, which
sometimes go before the will, sometimes, even as movements purely
sympathetic, escape altogether its empire. In fact, as neither
sensation, nor the desire, nor aversion, are subject to the free
arbitration of man, man has no right over the physical movements which
immediately depend on it. But the instinct does not confine itself to
simple desire; it presses, it advances, it endeavors to realize its
object; and if it does not meet in the autonomy of the mind an energetic
resistance, it will even anticipate it, it will itself take the
initiative of those sorts of acts over which the will alone has the right
to pronounce. For the instinct of conservation tends without ceasing to
usurp the legislative powers in the domain of the will, and its efforts
go to exercise over man a domination as absolute as over the beast.
There are, then, two sorts of distinct movements, which, in themselves
and by their origin, in each affective phenomenon, arise in man by the
instinct of conservation: those firstly which immediately proceed from
sensation, and which, consequently, are quite involuntary; then those
which in principle could and would be voluntary, but from which the blind
instinct of na