mode of representation that a coercion, and indeed a psychological one, takes place — this is, in the first place, not true; rather it is believed, just as readily and no doubt more generally, that an action, or the omission of an action, proceeds from the free will; and in that case one would need to trouble oneself about this opinion, in setting up principles and determining laws, no more than astronomers, in their cognition of the laws of the heavens, allow themselves to be detained by the opinion that the sun, the planets, and all the stars move around the earth, and are exactly as large as they appear, and so on; no more than the ship’s captain concerns himself with the opinion that the ship is at rest and the shores are moving away; if both held to that opinion, the former would find it impossible to comprehend the solar system, and the latter would let the rowers stop their work, or have the sails taken in, and both would at once find themselves unable to attain their purpose, and would immediately become aware of the non-reality of the opinion — just as, were they to concede it reality, it has been shown above that coercion, thought as reality, that is, represented within a system and within the totality, immediately sublates itself and the whole.

Since, then, a determinacy held fast by the opinion of the positive science is precisely the opposite of itself, it is equally possible for each of the two parties, each of which holds to one of the opposed determinacies, to refute the other; and this possibility of refutation consists in this, that of each determinacy it can be shown that it is not thinkable at all, and is nothing at all, without relation to its opposite; but precisely because it only is, and has meaning only in relation to that opposite, this opposite must and can likewise immediately be present, and be exhibited. That +A has no sense without relation to a -A serves to demonstrate that with +A there is immediately -A as well — which the opponent then takes to mean that -A is rather what is present here, rather than +A; but the very same can be retorted against his -A. Often, however, this trouble is not even taken, and, for example, it is not shown, regarding the freedom opposed to the sensuous incentives — which, precisely on account of this opposition, is just as little a true freedom — that everything that is supposed to be explained as an expression of this freedom must properly be explained as an effect of the sensuous incentives, which can be done very well, but no better than the converse can in turn be shown, namely that what is supposed to be experienced as an effect of the sensuous incentive must properly be experienced as an effect of freedom; instead, freedom is simply abstracted from altogether, and it is asserted that it does not belong here at all, because it is something inner, more than that something moral, and even something metaphysical; without, however, considering that the other determinacy, the one at which a halt has been made,

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