§ 191. But however much absolute idealism may tend to abandon its idealism for the sake of its absolutism within the field of metaphysics, such is not the case within the field of ethics and religion. The conception of the self here receives a new emphasis. The same self-consciousness which admits to the highest truth is the evidence of man's practical dignity. In virtue of his immediate apprehension of the principles of selfhood, and his direct participation in the life of spirit, man may be said to possess the innermost secret of the universe. In order to achieve goodness he must therefore recognize and express _himself_. The Kantian philosophy is here again the starting-point. It was Kant who first gave adequate expression to the Christian idea of the moral self-consciousness. "_Duty!_ Thou sublime and mighty name that dost embrace nothing charming or insinuating, but requirest submission, and yet seekest not to move the will by threatening aught that would arouse natural aversion or terror, but merely holdest forth a law which of itself finds entrance into the mind, . . . a law before which all inclinations are dumb, even though they secretly counterwork it; what origin is there worthy of thee, and where is to be found the root of thy noble descent which proudly rejects all kindred with the inclinations . . . ? It can be nothing less than a power which elevates man above himself, . . . a power which connects him with an order of things that only the understanding can conceive, with a world which at the same time commands the whole sensible world, and with it the empirically determinable existence of man in time, as well as the sum total of all ends."[387:12] With Kant there can be no morality except conduct be attended by the consciousness of this duty imposed by the higher nature upon the lower. It is this very recognition of a deeper self, of a personality that belongs to the sources and not to the consequences of nature, that constitutes man as a moral being, and only such action as is inspired with a reverence for it can be morally good. Kant does little more than to establish the uncompromising dignity of the moral will. In moral action man submits to a law that issues from himself in virtue of his rational nature. Here he yields nothing, as he owes nothing, to that appetency which binds him to the natural world. As a rational being he himself affirms the very principles which determine the organization of nature. This is his _freedom_, at once the ground and the implication of his duty. Man is free from nature to serve the higher law of his personality. [Sidenote: Kantian Ethics Supplemented through the Conceptions of Universal and Objective Spirit.]