Aphoristic Writings, Notebook, and Letters to a Friend, by Otto ...

thoroughly uncertain and, at the very most, probable, defends it in a series of brilliant
investigations in the psychology of the will.” 21
On deeper inspection this apparent contradiction becomes a necessity. Mach and
Avenarius are also such strong determinists that the question of free will hardly seems
to exist for them, and yet both deny causality. This is explained by the fact that only
the person who is permeated by empirical lawfulness feels the need to be free from it.
Causality is understood, recognized, and posited by freedom. The criminal does not
acknowledge causality, he wants to break through it: he wants to become suddenly
free from, for example, a hump, or a limp – that is how little he acknowledges facts
(for this reason his sense of reality is also limited). I believe Paul says: “It is an evil
and criminal way that longs for signs.” That is perfectly right. Only the criminal
awaits a miracle from outside; the moral person would be ashamed of a miracle from
outside; because he would surely be passive there. All bigots are criminals.
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Transcendentalism is identical with the thought that there is only one soul, and
that individuation is appearance. Here the monadological character of Kantian ethics
flatly contradicts the “Critique of Pure Reason”.
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The question whether there is one soul, or several, may not be posed; because the
relations of the noumena transcend numerical expression.
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Aesthetic and mathematical element (theory of proportion) in justice.
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Spiritism and materialism are one, and are different stages through which the same
person goes one after the other. The spiritual would lose its entire dignity if it
materialized.
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21 In Hume. op. cit., Vol. II. “Of the Passsions”. [Trans]
22