In short, there is for me, in general, no pure, naked existence, with which I have no concern, and which I contemplate solely for the sake of contemplation.  Whatever exists for me, exists only by virtue of its relation to me.  But there is everywhere but one relation to me possible, and all the rest are but varieties of this, i.e., my destination as a moral agent.  My world is the object and sphere of my duties, and absolutely nothing else.  There is no other world, no other attributes of my world, for me.  My collective capacity and all finite capacity is insufficient to comprehend any other.  Everything which exists for me forces its existence and its reality upon me, solely by means of this relation; and only by means of this relation do I grasp it.  There is utterly wanting in me an organ for any other existence.

To the question whether then in fact such a world exists as I represent to myself, I can answer nothing certain, nothing which is raised above all doubt, but this:  I have assuredly and truly these definite duties which represent themselves to me as duties toward such and such persons, concerning such and such objects.  These definite duties I cannot represent to myself otherwise, nor can I execute them otherwise, than as lying within the sphere of such a world as I conceive.  Even he who has never thought of his moral destination, if any such there could be, or who, if he has thought about it at all, has never entertained the slightest purpose of ever, in the indefinite future, fulfilling it—­even he derives his world of the senses and his belief in the reality of such a world no otherwise than from his idea of a moral world.  If he does not comprehend it through the idea of his duties, he certainly does so through the requisition of his rights.  What he does not require of himself he yet requires of others, in relation to himself—­that they treat him with care and consideration, agreeably to his nature, not as an irrational thing, but as a free and self-subsisting being.  And so he is constrained, in order that they may comply with this demand, to think of them also as rational, free, self-subsisting, and independent of the mere force of Nature.  And even though he should never propose to himself any other aim in the use and fruition of the objects which surround him than that of enjoying them, he still demands this enjoyment as a right, of which others must leave him in undisturbed possession.  Accordingly, he comprehends even the irrational world of the senses through a moral idea.  No one who lives a conscious life can renounce these claims to be respected as rational and self-subsisting.  And with these claims at least there is connected in his soul a seriousness, an abandonment of doubt, a belief in a reality, if not with the acknowledgment of a moral law in his innermost being.  Do but assail him who denies his own moral destination and your existence and the existence of a corporeal world, except in the way