of a body is explained as an increase of the attractive force, it can just as well be explained as an increase of the repulsive force; for only as much can be attracted as is repelled; the one has meaning only in relation to the other; by however much the one would be greater than the other, by that much it would not exist at all; and so what ought to be regarded as an increase of the one can, with equal justice, be regarded as an increase of its opposite.

So too, if within natural right in general, or in the theory of punishment in particular, a relation is determined as coercion, while philosophy demonstrates the nullity of this concept, and the positive science appeals to experience and actuality, insisting that coercion is indeed something real, that coercion really does take place, then the non-reality of coercion demonstrated by philosophy can, with equal right and with equal appeal to experience and actuality, be expressed by saying that there is no coercion at all, and that no human being is ever coerced, or ever has been coerced. For here everything depends solely on how the appearance is explained — whether, for the purposes of the representation of coercion, something is regarded as merely external, or rather as internal. Wherever, then, the existence of coercion is to be demonstrated, the very opposite can be shown of one and the same appearance, namely, that it is not a coercion but rather an expression of freedom; for by being taken up into the form of representation, and thereby determined through the inner, the ideal, the subject stands in freedom over against it. And if that which is supposed to count as external and as coercion is, in order to remove the opposition of the inner or of freedom, relocated into the inner itself, and a psychological coercion is thereupon asserted, this transposition of the external into the internal helps just as little. For thought remains simply free, and psychological or mental coercion is unable to bind it; the possibility of sublating the determinacy that is represented and is supposed to serve as coercion is absolute; it is simply possible that the loss of a determinacy, threatened by the punishment, be taken upon oneself, and that what the law seeks to wrest away through the punishment be surrendered. If, then, in the explanation of an appearance, the representation of a determinacy is supposed to act, or to have acted, as coercion, the explanation from the opposite — that the appearance is an expression of freedom — is just as simply possible. That the sensuous incentive, whether it be one that drives toward an action, or one that, on the side of the law, is meant to deter from it, is something psychological, that is, something inner, means that it is thereby immediately posited within freedom, which could either abstract from it or not, and either way is freedom of the will. But if it is objected that one nonetheless believes, and that it is a general

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