leaves morality terribly in the lurch. Kant, when theoretical Reason is exhausted, sends his Categorical Imperative, laboriously worked out of mere conceptions,[343] on the stage, as _deus ex machina_, with an absolute _ought_. But the mistake he made by it only became quite clear when Fichte, who always took outbidding for outdoing, had spun it out with Christian Wolfian prolixity and wearisomeness to a complete system of _moral fatalism_ in his "System of Moral Doctrine," and subsequently presented it more briefly in his last pamphlet.[344] [343] See my prize-essay "On the Fundament of Morality," § 6. [344] "Die Wissenschaftslehre in allgemeinen Umrisse" (The Doctrine of Science in a general outline), 18, 10. Now, from this point of view, a system which places the reality of all existence and the root of the whole of Nature in _the Will_, and in this will places the root of the world, must undeniably carry with it, to say the least, a strong prejudice in its favour. For, by a direct and simple way, it reaches, nay, already holds in its hand before coming to Ethics, what other systems try to reach by roundabout, ever dubious by-paths. Nor indeed can any other road ever lead to this but the insight, that the active and impulsive force in Nature which presents this perceptible world to our intellect, is identical with the will within us. The only Metaphysic which really and immediately supports Ethics, is that one which is itself primarily ethical and constituted out of the material of Ethics. Therefore I had a far greater right to call my Metaphysic "Ethics," than Spinoza, with whom the word sounds almost like irony, and whose "Ethics" might be said to bear the name like _lucus a non lucendo_; since it is only by means of sophistry that he has been able to tack his morality on to a system, from which it would never logically proceed. In general, moreover, he disavows it downright with revolting assurance.[345] On the whole, I can confidently assert, that there has never yet been a philosophical system so entirely cut out of one piece, so completely without any joins or patches, as mine. As I have said in my preface, it is the unfolding of a single thought, by which the ancient ἁπλοῦς ὁ μῦθος τῆς ἀληθείας ἔφυ[346] is again confirmed. Then we must still take into consideration here, that freedom and responsibility--those pillars on which all morality rests--can certainly be asserted in words without the assumption of the aseity[347] of the will; but that it is absolutely impossible to think them without it. Whoever wishes to dispute this, must first invalidate the axiom, stated long ago by the Schoolmen: _operari sequitur esse_ (_i.e._ the acts of each being follow from the nature of that being), or we must demonstrate the fallacy of the inference to be drawn from it: _unde esse, inde operari_. Responsibility has for its condition freedom; but freedom has for its condition primariness. For I _will_ according to what I