LETTER XIX

Two principal and different states of passive and active capacity of being determined [Footnote:  Bestimmbarkeit] can be distinguished in man; in like manner two states of passive and active determination. [Footnote:  Bestimmung.] The explanation of this proposition leads us most readily to our end.

The condition of the state of man before destination or direction is given him by the impressions of the senses is an unlimited capacity of being determined.  The infinite of time and space is given to his imagination for its free use; and, because nothing is settled in this kingdom of the possible, and therefore nothing is excluded from it, this state of absence of determination can be named an empty infiniteness, which must not by any means be confounded with an infinite void.

Now it is necessary that his sensuous nature should be modified, and that in the indefinite series of possible determinations one alone should become real.  One perception must spring up in it.  That which, in the previous state of determinableness, was only an empty potency becomes now an active force, and receives contents; but at the same time, as an active force it receives a limit, after having been, as a simple power, unlimited.  Reality exists now, but the infinite has disappeared.  To describe a figure in space, we are obliged to limit infinite space; to represent to ourselves a change in time, we are obliged to divide the totality of time.  Thus we only arrive at reality by limitation, at the positive, at a real position, by negation or exclusion; to determination, by the suppression of our free determinableness.

But mere exclusion would never beget a reality, nor would a mere sensuous impression ever give birth to a perception, if there were not something from which it was excluded, if by an absolute act of the mind the negation were not referred to something positive, and if opposition did not issue out of non-position.  This act of the mind is styled judging or thinking, and the result is named thought.

Before we determine a place in space, there is no space for us; but without absolute space we could never determine a place.  The same is the case with time.  Before we have an instant, there is no time to us; but without infinite time—­eternity—­we should never have a representation of the instant.  Thus, therefore, we can only arrive at the whole by the part, to the unlimited through limitation; but reciprocally we only arrive at the part through the whole, at limitation through the unlimited.