[p. 210]
|210| credibility, i.e. must have been in such circumstances as to be able to have knowledge of the matter. From their tone we can infer their honesty, whether they are in earnest or have some interest in it. If writers write under the government of a tyrant and they bestow eulogies on him, we see that these are flatteries. If we hear someone relate something in which he himself is entangled, one will surely hear that he relates it to his advantage. If someone, however, greatly praises a good quality or action of his enemy, we must rather believe what is said.)
Experience thus teaches only how objects are constituted, not how they must be, nor how they ought to be. This cognition proceeds only from the essence or the concept of the matter. It alone is the truthful one. Since from the concept we learn to cognize the grounds of the object, we must also cognize the concepts of the determinations of right, morality and religion.
In determining what is right and good we can at first hold to experience in general, and indeed, in the first place, to the external, namely to the course of the world. We can see what counts as right and good or what proves itself as right and good. On this it is to be remarked 1. that, in order to know which actions are right or good and which wrong or evil, one must already have beforehand the concept of the right and good; 2. if one therefore wished to hold to what the course of the world shows as valid too, nothing determinate would result on the matter. With regard to the results or the experience one has, it would depend on the view one brings along. In the course of the world, because it is itself this diverse happening, everyone can find confirmation for his subjective view, however different it may be.
But there is also, secondly, an inner experience of the right, the good and the religious. We judge through our
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