were changed, and therefore the anguish of conscience mere repentance, it
would cease to exist. The past could then no longer give us pain, for it
exhibited the expressions of a will which is no longer that of him who has
repented. We shall explain the significance of anguish of conscience in
detail farther on.
The influence which knowledge, as the medium of motives, exerts, not
indeed upon the will itself, but upon its appearance in actions, is also
the source of the principal distinction between the action of men and that
of brutes, for their methods of knowledge are different. The brute has
only knowledge of perception, the man, through reason, has also abstract
ideas, conceptions. Now, although man and brute are with equal necessity
determined by their motives, yet man, as distinguished from the brute, has
a complete _choice_, which has often been regarded as a freedom of the
will in particular actions, although it is nothing but the possibility of
a thoroughly-fought-out battle between several motives, the strongest of
which then determines it with necessity. For this the motives must have
assumed the form of abstract thoughts, because it is really only by means
of these that deliberation, _i.e._, a weighing of opposite reasons for
action, is possible. In the case of the brute there can only be a choice
between perceptible motives presented to it, so that the choice is limited
to the narrow sphere of its present sensuous perception. Therefore the
necessity of the determination of the will by the motive, which is like
that of the effect by the cause, can be exhibited perceptibly and directly
only in the case of the brutes, because here the spectator has the motives
just as directly before his eyes as their effect; while in the case of man
the motives are almost always abstract ideas, which are not communicated
to the spectator, and even for the actor himself the necessity of their
effect is hidden behind their conflict. For only _in abstracto_ can
several ideas, as judgments and chains of conclusions, lie beside each
other in consciousness, and then, free from all determination of time,
work against each other till the stronger overcomes the rest and
determines the will. This is the complete _choice_ or power of
deliberation which man has as distinguished from the brutes, and on
account of which freedom of the will has been attributed to him, in the
belief that his willing is a mere result of the operations of his
intellect, without a definite tendency which serves as its basis; while,
in truth, the motives only work on the foundation and under the
presupposition of his definite tendency, which in his case is individual,
_i.e._, a character. A fuller exposition of this power of deliberation,
and the difference between human and brute choice which is introduced by
it, will be found in the “Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics” (1st
edition, p. 35, _et seq._; 2d edition, p. 34, _et seq._), to which I
therefore refer.