[p. 239]
|239| as well as indifferent actions. Such an obligation would have no force, because it includes the freedom of the will, in which everyone must stand for himself. Ethical or unethical deeds are the own actions of him who commits them, and because they are of this nature, I cannot alienate them. – My religion too I cannot alienate. If a community or also an individual had left it to a third party to determine that which was to constitute their faith, this would be an obligation which each could unilaterally sublate. No wrong is thereby done to the other towards whom I have entered into this obligation, because what I have left to him could never become his property.
§ 14
On the other hand I can alienate the determinate use of my spiritual and bodily powers and the thing which I have in possession.
Explanation. Only a limited use of one’s powers can one alienate, because this use or the limited effect is distinct from the power. But the constant use, or the effect in its whole extent, cannot be distinguished from the power in itself. The power is the inner or universal as against its externalisation. The externalisations are an existence limited in space and time. The power in itself is not exhausted in a single such existence and is also not bound to any one of its contingent effects. But secondly, the power must act and externalise itself, otherwise it is no power. Thirdly, the whole extent of its effects constitutes the power itself, for the whole extent of the externalisation is again itself the universal, which the power is, and for this reason the human being cannot alienate the whole use of his powers; he would otherwise alienate his personality.
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