These thoughts are discussed anew in the _Hippias minor,_ where the multiple difficulties are placed in relief and a conclusion reached that does not even satisfy those who propose it.[12] It is henceforward clear that the question must be solved in the sense that he who is conscious of sinning is certainly a sinner, whereas he who is not conscious of so doing, does not sin at all; but this being even incapable of sinning is in itself a sin, and places the man who is in such a condition yet a degree lower. In the polemic of Pascal with the Jesuits--who maintained that in order to sin it was necessary to be conscious of one's own infirmity and of the suitable remedy, the wish to be healed and to ask it of God--the Jesuits were theoretically on the side of reason. _Croira-t-on, sur votre parole_ (wrote Pascal), _que ceux qui sont plongés dans l'avarice, dans l'impudicité, dans les blasphèmes, dans le duel, dans la vengeance, dans les vols, dans les sacrilèges, aient véritablement le désir d'embrasser la chasteté, l'humilité et les autres vertus chrétiennes?_ Nevertheless, it is inevitably so, if those acts of theirs are to be judged to be vices (and if they really are so). Hegel places himself on the side of Pascal, who accepts and refers to the following argument and reduction to the absurd: _Ils seront tous damnés ces demi-pécheurs qui ont quelque amour pour la vertu. Mais pour ces francs-pécheurs, sans mélange, pleins et achevés, l'enfer ne les tient pas: ils ont trompé le diable à force de s'y abandonner._[13] A reduction to the absurd which is not such: because the formula given as absurd expresses at bottom a very simple truth, which Hegel too stated in his own way, when he said that it was necessary to prefer self-will, evil, the erring Spirit, to the innocence of plants and animals, or of Nature.[14] [Sidenote: _The concept of duty._] IV. A classical example of the disputes as to the principle of the Philosophy of the practical, arising from the consideration of this principle in its empirical formulations, can be furnished from the polemic of Herbart against Kant on the subject of _duty._ Herbart demonstrated that duty is not an original but a derived concept, and that it appears only when there is disagreement between the practical _ideas_ and the _will_.[15] But it would be possible to demonstrate with the same method that the practical ideas are derived concepts, because they do indeed presuppose the moral will, from the manifestations of which they are constituted by means of abstraction. Herbart was in the right against Kant, but he afterwards let the axe fall on his own feet. The hard formula of the imperative preferred by Kant had already been combated by Frederick Schiller, who accentuated the moment of pleasure, sympathy and enthusiasm in the good action. [Sidenote: _Repentance and remorse._]