The second begins from my invisible self, my personality,
and exhibits me in a world which has true infinity, but which is
traceable only by the understanding, and with which I discern that I
am not in a merely contingent but in a universal and necessary
connection, as I am also thereby with all those visible worlds. The
former view of a countless multitude of worlds annihilates as it
were my importance as an animal creature, which after it has been
for a short time provided with vital power, one knows not how, must
again give back the matter of which it was formed to the planet it
inhabits (a mere speck in the universe). The second, on the
contrary, infinitely elevates my worth as an intelligence by my
personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life independent
of animality and even of the whole sensible world, at least so far
as may be inferred from the destination assigned to my existence by
this law, a destination not restricted to conditions and limits of
this life, but reaching into the infinite.
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