and is proper to weak and irresolute spirits, as indeed are dualism, spiritualism, agnosticism, neocriticism, of which this doctrine forms a particular case. When the absurdity of determinism and of arbitrarism has been recognized (and their very presence is an autocriticism), it is necessary to satisfy with a new and single concept the claim that they represent, certainly not with _the sum of two errors,_ and the new single concept is that of true freedom. [Sidenote: _Its character of transaction and transition._] The doctrine of double causality has had its historical importance, not because it is a _transaction,_ but rather because it is a _transition;_ that is, a gradual approximation to the true concept, with the introduction into the naturalistic concept of an element of ferment and dissolution: the concept of a causality by means of freedom, that is, of a causality that is so only in name. The concept of freedom cannot tolerate that of causality at its side, and of the two series posited, one of the two is not real in itself, but simply a particular product of the other: mechanical causality is not a fact, nor a conception, but an instrument created for its own ends by spiritual freedom itself. And only in this sense can it be admitted that freedom avails itself of causality for its effectuation, and the truth of the observation be realized, that the classifying of the perceptions in series of cause and effect becomes itself also a presupposition of will and action. The historical knowledge as to the actual situation that precedes the volition, since it includes of necessity philosophical universal in itself, so it can also include empirical universals, concepts, and pseudo--concepts: the consciousness of the productivity of the spirit and the mnemonic formulæ in which this productivity is fixed, and for which it certainly appears to be mechanical, but only to him who forgets that the formulæ themselves are mechanical. [1] Summonte, _Historia di Napoli,_ ed. 1675, iv. 205, "Miracle caused by fear." [2] Dante, _Parad._ iv. 76. [3] _Einleit. in die Phil._ § 128, trad. Vidossich, p. 169. II FREEDOM AND ITS OPPOSITE. GOOD AND EVIL [Sidenote: _Freedom of action as reality of action._]