Or, at least, so it seems on first acquaintance. The command of duty, addressed to the sensuously-conditioned nature, brooks no opposition and condescends to no reasons in explanation or promises by way of attraction. The moral law claims unconditional authority: towards its sublime aspect reverence and sheer obeisance is due, utter loyalty to duty for duty's sake. Nothing short of this absolute identification with the Ought and a willingly willed self-surrender of the whole self to it can entitle an agent to the full rank of moral goodness. Such is the form--the synthetic link which joins the sensuous will indissolubly with the will reasonable of moral law. Now for its explanation. Humanity, though in the world of appearance and experience always subject to sensuous conditions, is also a power of transcending these conditions. Man is more than he can ever show in visibly single act. He has in him the hope, the faith, the vision of absolute perfection and completeness: but has it not as positive attained vision, but as the perpetual unrest of unsatisfied endeavour, as the feeling and the anticipation of an unachieved idea. And that perfection, that completeness he believes himself to be; he even in some sense is. Lapses and ill-success cannot quench the faith: for so long as there is life, there is hope. As he pictures out this invisible self, it may assume various forms more or less imaginative. At times it may seem a far away, and yet intimately near, being of beings,--the common father of all souls, the eternal self-existent centre of life and love, the omnipresent bond of nature, the omniscient heart of hearts,--on whom he can lean in closest communion; though he is only too well aware how often he lives as if God were not, and human beings were roaming specks in chaos. At other times, he looks up to it as to an inner and better self, his conscience, the true and permanent being, which controls his choices and avoidances, which approves and disapproves, commands and condemns: his soul of soul, genius, and guardian spirit. In such a mood to be true to his own self--to follow the very voice of his nature--is to realise his law of life. His Ego is the absolute ego--the reason which is all things. And lastly, there are times when he conceives this better self and true essence as the community of the faithful, as the congregation of reasonable beings, of all perfected humanity.