self-reversing

Updated: May 23, 2025

These are compulsions; but it may also, I suppose, be thought a duty on the part of the vital impulse to be true to its initial direction and not to halt, as it well might, like the self-reversing Will of Schopenhauer, on perceiving the result of its spontaneous efforts. Necessity would thus appear behind liberty and duty before it.

George Santayana - Winds Of Doctrine: Studies in Contemporary Opinion