115. In the direct or immediate act the subjective will is finite, since it has to do with both an external object and its varied surroundings, all presupposed. An accomplished act makes a change in this ready-tohand material, and the will is responsible, in so far as the changed material can be said to be mine.
Note.— An event or resultant condition is a concrete external reality, having an indefinite number of circumstances associated with it. Every particular element, shown to be in any sense a condition, ground or cause of such an event, and, therefore, to have contributed its portion, may be regarded as responsible for it, or at least as sharing in the responsibility. Hence in the case of such a richly varied event as the French Revolution, the formal understanding has to select from an untold multitude of circumstances that one to which it will attribute responsibility.
Addition.— What is contained in my purpose can be laid at my door, and this is one of the main considerations in the case of crime. But in simple responsibility there is round only the quite external judgment as to whether I nave or have not done this thing. Thus merely to be responsible does not mean that the whole thing is to be imputed to me.
116. It is not my deed, if things, which I own, cause injury to others through some of their many external connections; this may happen even with my body as a mechanical or living object. Yet I am not wholly free from responsibility in such a case, since these things are still mine, although by their very nature they are often only imperfectly subject to my attention and control.
117. When the self-directing will proposes to act upon a given material, it has a representation of the circumstances. Since the material is supplied, the will is finite, and the results of the act are for it accidental. Hence they may contain something very different from the representation. But the right of the will in acting is to recognize as its own deed only those results which were consciously in its end and were purposed. That responsibility shall extend to the will only so far as the results were known, is the right of knowledge.
Addition.— The will has before it an outer reality, upon which it operates. But to be able to do this, it must have a representation of this reality. True responsibility is mine only in so far as the outer reality was within my consciousness. The will, because this external matter is supplied to it, is finite; or rather because it is finite, the matter is supplied. When I think and will rationally, I am not at this standpoint of finitude, nor is the object I act upon something opposed to me. The finite always has limit and boundary. There stands opposed to me that which is other than I, something accidental and externally necessary; it may or may not fall into agreement with me. But I am only what relates to my freedom; and the act is the purport of my will only in so far as I am aware of it. Œdipus, who unwittingly slew his father, is not to be arraigned as a patricide. In the ancient laws, however, less value was attached to the subjective side of the act than is done to-day. Hence arose amongst the ancients asylums, where the fugitive from revenge might be received and protected.
118. An act, when it has become an external reality, and is connected with a varied outer necessity, has manifold consequences. These consequences, being the visible shape, whose soul is the end of action, belong to the act. But at the same time the inner act, when realized as an end in the external world, is handed over to external forces, which attach to it something quite different from what it is in itself, and thus carry it away into strange and distant consequences. It is the right of the will to adopt only the first consequences, since they alone lie in the purpose.
Note.— The division of consequences into necessary and accidental is not accurate, because the inner necessity, involved in the finite, is realized as a necessity which is external, a necessity, that is to say, implying a relation of separate things, which are independent, indifferent to one another, and only externally connected. The principle “In acting neglect the consequences,” and the principle “Judge an act by its consequences, and make them the standard of what is right and good,” belong both alike to the abstract understanding. The consequences are the native form of the act, simply manifest its nature, and are nothing but the act itself. The act cannot scorn and disown them. Yet amongst the consequences is included that which is only externally attached to them and has no fellowship with the act itself.
The development of the contradiction involved in the necessary nature of the finite is in external reality the conversion of necessity into contingency and vice versa. An overt act must therefore conform to this law. This law it is which stands the criminal in such good stead, if his act has had but few consequences; so also must the good act be contented to have few or no consequences. But when the consequences of crime have fully developed themselves, they add to the severity of the punishment.
The self-consciousness of the heroic age, painted in the tragedy of “Œdipus,” for instance, had not risen out of its simplicity, or reflectively appreciated the difference between realized deed and inner act, between the outer occurrence and the purpose and knowledge of surroundings. Nor did it distinguish between one consequence and another, but spread responsibility over the whole area of the deed.
Addition.—In the fact that I recognize as mine only what was in my representation is to be found the transition from purpose to intention. Only what I knew of the surroundings can be imputed to me. But there are necessary results attached to even the simplest act, and they are its universal element. The consequences, which may be prevented from taking effect, I cannot indeed foresee, but I ought to know the universal nature of each separate concrete deed. The thing which I ought to know is the essential whole, which refers not to special details of an act, but to its real nature. The transition from purpose to intention consists in my being aware not merely of my separate act, but of the universal bound up with it. This universal, when willed by me, is my intention.