therefore they have allowed their king to do much that was immoral; for if incest, pederasty, the eating of human flesh, were at first forbidden as though through a natural instinct only, they likewise can by no means exist before the judgment-seat of reason. The Stoic wise man is thus also ‘enlightened,’ in the sense that where he did not know how to bring the natural instinct into the form of a rational reason, he trampled upon nature. Thus that which is called natural law or natural instinct comes into opposition with what is set forth as immediately and universally rational. For example, those first actions seem to rest on natural feelings, and we must remember that feelings are certainly not the object of thought; as opposed to this, property is something thought, universal in itself, a recognition of my possession from all, and thus it indeed belongs to the region of the understanding. But should the wise man hence not be bound by the former because it is not something immediately thought, this is merely the fault of his want of comprehension. As we have, however, seen that in the sphere of theory the thought-out simplicity of the truth is capable of all content, so we find this also to be the case with the good, that which is practically thought-out, without therefore being any content in itself. To wish to justify such a content through a reason thus indicates a confusion between the perception of the individual and that of all reality, it means a superficiality of perception which does not acknowledge a certain thing because it is not known in this and that regard. But this is so for the reason that it only seeks out and knows the most immediate grounds and cannot know whether there are not other aspects and other grounds. Such grounds as these allow of reasons for and against everything being found—on the one hand a positive relation to something which, though in other cases necessary, as such can also be again sublated; and, on the other hand, a negative relation to something necessary, which can likewise again be held to be valid.