circumstance, and its causes, perfectly admitted quite a different, indeed, a directly opposite course of action; nay, that such a course would actually have taken place, =if only he had been a different person=. That he is precisely such a one as his conduct proclaims him to be, and no other--this it is for which he feels himself responsible; in his _esse_ (what he is) lies the vulnerable place, where the sting of conscience penetrates. For Conscience is nothing but acquaintance with one's own self--an acquaintance that arises out of one's actual mode of conduct, and which becomes ever more intimate. So that it is the _esse_ (what one is) which in reality is accused by conscience, while the _operari_ (what one does) supplies the incriminating evidence. Since we are only conscious of =Freedom= through the sense of =responsibility=; therefore where the latter lies the former must also be; in the _esse_ (in one's being). It is the _operari_ (what one does) that is subject to necessity. But we can only get to know ourselves, as well as others =empirically=; we have no _a priori_ knowledge of our character. Certainly our natural tendency is to cherish a very high opinion of it, because the maxim: _Quisque praesumitur bonus, donec probetur contrarium_ (every one is presumed to be good, until the contrary is proved), is perhaps even more true of the inner court of justice than of the world's tribunals. NOTE. He who is capable of recognising the essential part of a thought, though clothed in a dress very different from what he is familiar with, will see, as I do, that this Kantian doctrine of the intelligible and empirical character is a piece of insight already possessed by Plato. The difference is, that with Kant it is sublimated to an abstract clearness; with Plato it is treated mythically, and connected with metempsychosis, because, as he did not perceive the ideality of Time, he could only represent it under a temporal form. The identity of the one doctrine with the other becomes exceedingly plain, if we read the explanation and illustration of the Platonic myth, which Porphyrius has given with such clear exactitude, that its agreement with the abstract language of Kant comes out unmistakably. In the second book of his Eclogues, chap. 8, §§ 37-40,[4] Stobaeus has preserved for us _in extenso_ that part of one of Porphyrius' lost writings which specially comments on the myth in question, as Plato gives it in the second half of the tenth book of the Republic.[5] The whole section is eminently worth reading. As a specimen I shall quote the short § 39, in the hope of inducing any one who cares for these things to study Stobaeus for himself. It will then immediately become apparent that this Platonic myth is nothing less than an allegory of the profound truth which Kant stated in its abstract purity, as the doctrine of the intelligible and empirical character, and consequently that the latter had been reached,