Truly encouraging words for the modern agitator and reformer. To summon the courage to rise above the level of the masses, to feel within himself the centre of gravity, and to fashion his thoughts regardless of the whole world, this is nothing less than the beginning of philosophy and wisdom. And should he feel himself strong-minded he may simply change all moral and religious values which do not square with his individual judgments. “To remain faithful to one’s own self,” we are told again, “that is the essence of this ideal bravery. No one can possess this virtue who does not feel within himself the centre about which life gravitates; whoever pursues exterior things as his ultimate end cannot penetrate to interior freedom. _Spinoza_, by life and teaching, is a great preacher of this freedom” (Ibid. II, p. 27). Self-consciousness as arrogant as that of a pantheist like _Spinoza_, who indeed did not pursue “exterior things as the ultimate end,” nor God either; the self-consciousness in which man feels himself the centre about which world and life revolve; the will which now directs thought on its way,—these are the life-nerves of autonomous free-thought. In fact, inclination and will, not objective truth, are the measure and norm of free-thought. This _Paulsen_ again expresses with astonishing candour. According to him, intelligence is after all nothing else than a transformation of the will, this doctrine is rooted in the more modern voluntaristic monism, and is akin to subjectivism. If our cognition itself forms its object, then the real concept of cognition has been lost to us, and in its place we have the will determining the action even of the intellect. _Paulsen_ says emphatically, “Intelligence is an instrument of the will in the service of preservation of life.... Perhaps it can be said that even the elementary formations of thought, the logical and metaphysical forms of reality, are already codetermined by the will. If the forms of abstract thought are at all the result of biological evolution, then this must be accepted: they are formations and conceptions of reality, which have proved effective and life-preserving, and have therefore attained their object. The principle of identity is in reality not a mere statement, not an indicative, but an imperative: A is A; that is, what I have put down as A shall be A and remain A.... If this be so, if thought and cognition be determined fundamentally by the will, then it is altogether unintelligible how it might finally turn against the will, and force upon it a view against its will” (_Kant’s_ Verhaeltniss zur Metaphysik, 1900, p. 31 f.).