uni/ef;;Tt' of CALiFOPrjiA s*.rj DiEGO 3 1822 0271 9890 GRI soPHicAL Classic f LlbRAKr ^lALIFORNIA |^rt!v-?^ssw- LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN 0IE6O ^ J i 3 Si GERMAN PHILOSOPHICAL CLASSICS ENGLISH READERS MD STUDENTS. EDITED BT GEORGE S. MORRIS KAI^T^S ETHICS. '^ I GRIGGS'S PHILOSOPHICAL CLASSICS. Under tlio editorial supervision of Prof. G. S. Morris. De^mtcd to a Critical Exposition of the Master- pieces of German Thought. Kant's Critique of Pure Season. By Prof. G. S. Morris, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan. $1.2.5. Schelling's Transcendental Idealism. By Prof. .loHN Watson, LL.D., of (^iicuu'i- I'liiversity, Kingston, Canada. S1-~'T- Fichte's Science of Knowledge. By Prof. C. C. EvERKTT. U.D , of Harvard I'liiversity. $1.35. Hegel's -ffisthetics. By Prof. J. S, Kedney, S.T.D., of tlie Seabury Divinity School. %\:Si. Kant's Ethics. By President Noah Porter, D.D., LL.D., of Yale College. $1.25. OTHER VOLUMES IN PREPARATION. A handy series of the great German thinkers ; of much interest and great convenience to scholars and to the more general reader.— Cmcjwwa^i Com. Gazette. This series offers an exceedingly valuable compen- dium of German philosophic thought, valuable in any tongue, and especially so iu the English, in which there is nothing to compare with it.— Gfiicago Times. These excellent books, as remarkable for ability as for clearness, will do much to clear the way and make the mastery of the German systems a comparatively easy task.— xVeii' York Examiner. KANT'S ETHICS. A CRITICAL EXPOSITION. By NOAH PORTER, PRESIDENT OF TALE COLLEGE. CHICACiO: C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY. 1886. Copyright, 1886. By S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY I KKIGHT &■■ LEONARD . t UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. SAN DIEGO 3 1822 02711 9890 THIS VOLr:ME IS INSCRIBED PRESIDENT MAKK HOPKINS, D.D., LLD., IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF HIS EMINENT SERVICES TO ETHICAL SCIENCE, CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. PEEFAOE. r I IHE essay now given to the public has been -*- promised for several months, but was written for the most part as a vacation exercise during the last summer. Its theme is Kant's Theory of Ethics, as contrasted with his practical teachings, so far as the former is distinctive of his school. For this rea- son it is chiefly concerned with the two treatises in which this theory is explained and defended, viz.: Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, 1785; Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft, 1788. As its title imports, this treatise is both expository and critical. In expounding Kant's ethical theory to English readers, the writer has thought it best to state this theory very largely in Kant's own lan- guage, with such comments as might be required to make it intelligible. He has done this for two reasons, that he might be entirely just to Kant him- self, and that he might aid the unpractised student in the somewhat discouraging task of interpreting the German philosopher. For both these reasons he has Vlii PREFACE. often retained Kant's peculiar and frequently highly- technical phraseology in order that, by mere repe- tition, it might become familiar, while yet he has sought to give its meaning in current English, that the student might acquire facility in interpreting the Kantian dialect by its English equivalents. He does not assert that in every case he has been successful in the last-named attempt. The English text, which he has invariably used, is that of the generally ap- proved translation of Professor Abbott, of Trinity College, Dublin.* The critical remarks of the author are usually given as a running commentary upon the text with the important exception of §§ 21-33, in which the exposition covers §§ 21-26 and the criticism §§ 27-33. These comments suppose some familiarity with eth- ical theories, and the criticisms and schools to which they have given rise, although the writer has scru- pulously avoided all personal and partisan ref- erences, and endeavored to confine himself to his appropriate functions as the expounder and critic of his author. Besides the expository and critical matter thus * Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and other works on the Theory of Ethics. Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott. M. A., etc. London ; Longmans, Green & Co., 1879. PREFACE. IX described the reader will find a brief general intro- duction, together with a summary or condensed review of the distinctive positions taken by Kant upon the most important topics as compared with those of other — principally English — writers, and some brief strictures upon Kant by a few German critics. The preparation of this essay has cost the writer some Labor, but the labor has brought its own rewai"d. He trusts that the result will be useful as an aid to those students who are interested in the study of ethical theories, and who appreciate the practical significance of such theories at the present time. N. P. Yale College, Dec. 1, 1885. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. Plan and reasons for the treatise .... 1 Relation of the Kantian Ethics to the Meta- physics 2 Not necessary to expound the Metaphysics at length 3 Salient features of the same 3 Kant"s important services to modern thought . 5 Especially upon Theology and Ethics ... 6 Their effect upon Faith in the Supernatural . 7 Influence upon speculation and literature in England and America 8 Difficulties in criticisingf the same .... 11 CHAPTER I. PRINCIPAL ETHICAL TREATISES. Titles of Ethical Treatises 13 The Critique of Pure Reason 14 The Prolegomena 15 xii COKTENTS. Relation to Ethics l(i Critique of Pare Reason — Fundamental ques- tion of 18 Phenomena vs. Things in themselves ... 19 Noumena . 20 Limits of human knowledge 21 Disappointment 22 Promised deliverance 22 Elements of Kant's Constructive Ethics . . 23 Three important questions proposed by Kant . 25 Plausibility of his solution ,26 Obligation to consistency 28 This solution preliminary and imperfect . . 29 Principles relative and absolute .31 Fundamental principles of Ethics readily un- derstood and assented to 38 In speculative principles, Kant claims only a relative authority 34 Danger of confounding speculative and ethical principles 36 We proceed next to the examination of his formal motives .....,.».. 37 CHAPTER II. THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. The Metaphysics of Morals tentative only . 38 A Metaphysics of Morals possible o » o . 39 CONTENTS. XIU Preliminary sketch of the author's system . . 41 Division of topics in the Grundlegung . . - 42 Import of his opening sentence ..... 43 Kant's interpretation of the " Good-will " . . 45 (1) An act from inclination, not an act of duty 4-") (2) The maxim, not the end, determining moral worth .4(3 (o) Respect for the law essential to duty . 4(i The content or import of the moral law . , 47 Kant's scepticism in respect to speculative truth 49 Criticism of Kant's first sentence .... 50 Diverse meanings of " Good-will " . . . , 51 Kant's defective conception of his opponents' doctrines 54 Kant's limited and low conception of hapi)i- ness 55 Gratification of the Reason 5(3 Kant's defective conception of duty and obliga- tion . 57 Other oversights of Kant ....... 58 Kant's second error 60 Third mistake. Respect for the law a sensibil- ity .... 61 Conceded to be an " obscure feeling " - . . 61 Criterion of an act of duty ... .62 Second section of Kant's treatise . . 64 Kant's first position, that every ideal must be actual . o . 64 XIV CONTENTS. Whence is the moral ideal derived ? Kant and his critics 66 Kant overlooks the sensibility as an element of the ideal 67 Right action defined in the most general way as reasonable action 69 A perfect will excludes obligation .... 70 The categorical and hypothetical imperative . 71 Kant's defective conception of happiness . . 73 Kant adopts the criterion of consequences as a practical rule 76 Relation of the moral ideal to the actual, in man 79 A life according to nature 82 He analyzes human nature before he is aware 83 Discovers ends of action and personality . . 84 But does not formally abandon the categorical imperative 87 And yet he practically shifts his ground . . 88 Rationality does not exclude relations to the sensibility 90 Kant's views of the will indefinite .... 92 The personal Ego overlooked 94 Transition from the Metaphysics of Morals to the Critique of Practical Reason .... 95 Kant returns to the will and moral freedom . 97 The man noumenal and man phenomenal . . 100 Kant's " Freedom " still more exactl}^ defined . 102 Kant concedes that the moral law affects the sensibilities '= . 104 CONTENTS. XV CHAPTER III. THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON. Preface and Introduction .... = . 108 Practical, not pure and practical .... 109 The practical reason supplies an a priori ele- ment 110 Reply to a criticism Ill Twofold function ascribed to the will . . . 113 Vacillating and uncertain classification of the psychical powers 115 ^ Kant's indefinite conceptions of the will . .116 Knowledge of every sort begins with judgments, not concepts r . . 118 Principles of practical reason defined » . . 119 Every motive must address the reason . , . 120 Empirical principles defined 121 Material practical principles defined . . . 123 Practical principles formal, and not material . 124 Two problems proposed ...... = 125 Autonomy and heteronomy of the will . . . 127 Ill-desert analyzed 128 The contrast stated between the pure and the practical reason .129 How can we apply the commands of the prac- tical reason to the world of sense . . . .loo The object and effect of the practical reason » 134 The typic of the pure practical reason . . <. 137 The motives of the pure practical reason . . 139 XV] CONTENTS. Obligation and respect for the law .... 140 Acting according to duty, and from a sense of duty 142 Import of a command to love 143 Apostrophe to Duty 145 Personality here recognized for the first time . 146 Reasons why the practical reason admits a sin- gle systematic form only ...... 148 Appeal to the universal consciousness . . . 149 Difference between physical and psychical causes 151 Relations of man, the nounienon, to time and space 154 Dynamical and mathematical categories . . 154 The dialectic of the practical reason . . .156 Anticipation of moral satisfaction not moral . 158 Self-contentment conceded to be ethically legit- imate 160 The primacy of the practical above the specula- tive reason 162 How far have they a common root .... 163 Argument for immortality 164 This argument assumes design as objectively true 166 Argument for God's existence 166 Difference between rational and moral ends . 168 New argument attempted 170 Can the practical be independent of the specu- lative reason 172 DifiFerenee between a hypothesis and a postulate 174 CONTENTS. Xvii Kant's argument reduced to — what . . . 175 Methodology of the practical reason . . . 176 The starry heavens and the moral law . . . 177 Practical needs are supreme and isolated . . 179 <^ Comments on the conclusion 180 CHAPTER IV. A CRITICAL SUMMARY OF KANt's ETHICAL THEORV. The practical reason briefly described . . . 184 Whence its authority 186 How related to Butler's Principle of Reflection 186 Kant's objective rule of duty 190 Good and ill- desert according to Kant and Butler . 191 Kant's doctrine of freedom .....= 193 Freedom of the Ego noumenon ..... 195 Relation of Kant's Ethics to speculative truth . 198 Ethical grounds for Belief in Immortality . » 199 Further remai'ks upon the Categorical Impera- tive . , . o 201 Personality essential to obligation .... 202 Sense of authority complex and derived . 204 The two explanations contrasted . . . . = 205 Kant's explanation of the moral law % . ? .201 — Kant's view of conformity to man's moral nature 209 Further criticism of Kant's doctrine of the will 210 XV CONTEN"TS. Kant's late and inadequate recognition of pur- pose , . 212 Kant's failure to do justice to personality . . 214 His depreciation of the emotions and the sensi- bility 216 The intellectual application of Kant's Ethics . 220 Authority of experience in ethical questions . 221 Kant's Ethics and the Christian, contrasted . 224 Relations to Theistic and Christian truth . , 226 CHAPTER V. BRIEF NOTICES FROM A FEW OF KANt's GERMAN CRITICS. Introductory o . 232 Schiller's comments on Kant's Ethics . . . 233 Schleiermacher and Lotze ...... 239 Trendelenburg's strictures on Kant . . o . 243 IJSTTRODUCTORY. § 1. The title of this treatise describes its pur- pose. It proposes, first to interpret and Plan and then to criticise the principal features of Reasons for Kant's ethical system. Ft proposes the one in order to effect the other. This method is appropriate to the examination of every philosoph- ical writer and every philosophical system; and so emphatically, that a skilful interpretation is often of itself the most satisfactory criticism, as it is al- ways the most effective preparation for the same. This is preeminently true of every division of the Kantian philosophy, of those even which seem to be the least speculative. It might seem at first thought that the Kantian Ethics, like ethics in general or the principles of any individual ethical system, must be so far independent of any special meta- physical theories as to involve no special difficulty of either interpretation or criticism. This is only true of a few of Kant's leading positions, when inter- preted in their practical spirit and enforced with 2 IXTRODUCTOKY. a certain imaginative fervor. On the other hand, it Relation of is most obvious that whatever is espe- tiu- Kantian ^j^jj ^^^ characteristically Kantian in Ethics to the ■' •' Metaphysics^, ethics is either founded on the Kantian Metaphysics, or else is applied in its service. Not unfrequently Kant's ethical positions seem to be assumed, almost to be devised, either to support or to supplement some cardinal point in his philosophy. Whatever in the Ethics is peculiar in scientific form or principle, in terminology or logical cohei'ence, will be found to be ultimately connected with the Kantian Metaphysics. It follows that the student will find it impossible to understand or to criticise the Ethics of Kant unless he constantly keeps in mind or often refers to the leading principles of his phil- osophy, either as furnishing the foundations on which the Ethics rest or as responsible for the defects which they seek to supplement. Unless we are greatly mistaken, his ethical system is made to fulfil both functions, paradoxical as this may seem, being used at one time as the foundation and at another as the complement of his metaphysics — now as the base which supports the pillars of the springing arch, and then as the keystone which crowns and holds it together. It cannot be denied, we think, that the place which ethics occupy in Kant's theory of knowl- INTRODUCTORY, 3 edge is unique and almost paradoxical, and that consequently his system is invested with a special fascination for the careful student of modern specu- lation. § 2. The reader will not infer that the author proposes first to interpret Kant's entire Not Necessary speculative system in order that he mav '° ^f,^"""^ I J " the Metaphys- explain or criticise his Ethics. To do so ics at Length. would be entirely gratuitous, after this work has been done so well by the editor of the present series and by other writers. But he could not avoid the distinct recognition of the relations of the one to the other, so far as this is required, in order to make the Ethics intelligible in both their weakness and strength. He could not but notice that the two are constantly and often inextricably intertwined to- gether. The peculiar and oftentimes the strongly marked terminology of both ethics and philosophy makes it still more necessary to study the one by the light of the other. There is no use in disguising the fact that Kant's terminology is always technical in the extreme, and sometimes absolutely barbarous. Indeed, few writers, ancient or modern. Salient of such marked ability, who have had so Features of , , 1 • i 11 • n the Same. reasonable a claim to ask a hearing from their generation, have so completely cut themselves 4 INTKODUCTORY. off from the generations of philosophers who went before them by the adoption of an artificial and novel diction as Immanuel Kant has done. By this alone he could not but separate himself from the earlier thinking of his own youth and early manhood, as also from the thinking of his own gen- eration, and at the same time load himself with the Herculean task of constructing and forcing upon his readers a peculiar and artificial termi- nology of his own. No writer of modern times, at least no one who has written so voluminously and so ably as Kant, has made so few references or allusions to the great philosophic thinkers of other times and to their opinions. That he had thought earnestly upon the same themes which had occupied their at- tention is abundantly evident; but for some reason or other he seems to have scorned to put himself en rapport with these great thinkers, or to hold with them any intimate relations of either indebtedness or repudiation. Whether it was owing to the depth of the dogmatic slumber in which Wolf had over- whelmed his spirit, or the suddenness and complete- ness of his awakening by Hume, or the delirious intoxication and delight with which his own im- agined discoveries seemed to inspire him, whatever was the cause or the occasion, it is certain that he INTRODUCTORY, 5 spake to his generation in a strange philosophical dialect which it has been difficult for many of his in- terpreters to master, and which some have rashly but not unnaturally concluded was scarcely worth the mastering. But notwithstanding the uncouthness of the dialect which Kant employed, he compelled his generation to listen to his words and to attempt to solve the problems which he proposed. Many professed not to understand his meaning, and many complained with reason of the strangeness and harshness of his terminology, but those who listened could not escape the obligation to answer those of his questions which they could not fail to understand. § 3. Another excellent thing he accomplished : He made the men of his time under- Kant's impor- stand that certain of the questions which tan»;^Services ■^ to Modern he propounded must be answered after Thought. a way to which they had not been accustomed befoi'e.* As the result of his teachings and argu- ments, Speculative Science discovered new necessi- ties, even though she felt herself unable to satisfy them. First of all, Philosophy was forced to confess * Daher wird man, wo es sich um die Principien, die eigentliche Anfgabe der Philosophie, handelt, nie vor Kant vorbeigehen diirfen. Mag man in der Lusting des Problems von Kant abweichen miissen, man wird immer von Kant lernen, wie man es zuniichst anfzufassen und anzufassen. A. Trendelenburg, Hist. Beitr. zur Philos., iii, 172. 6 INTRODUCTORY. that she could not ignore Theology. Religions un- Pispeciaiiy belief was taught that the shallows in Theoio'^y which it had been content to wade were and Ethics. bordered b}" a deep and boundless sea. As Faith was driven from one of its fancied strong- holds to another, it was seemingly to seek and to find its refuge only in ethical convictions and ethical authorit}'. Whatever impression was made by Kant's speculative system, its ethical tone was felt to be lofty and commanding in its every strain. Wherever the Kantian philosophy was accepted, a noble and high-toned Stoicism took the place of the prevalent sensual and self-indulgent Epicureanism. Self-sacrifice and self-control were honored, and self-indulgence was put to shame. The old and sterner German virtues came to the front, which had been systematically dishonoi'ed by the corrupting sensualism of Voltaire in the youth- ful court of the Great Frederick, and the scarcely less debauching sentimentalism of Rousseau. The new German literature, certainly the better part of it, such as was represented by Schiller and his school, was animated by a genuine, if it was an oversti-ained and romantic, ethical fervor. It is almost universally acknowledged, and cannot be denied, that it was in the Kantian school that the INTROnrCTORY. 7 seeds were sown of those better aspirations of patri- otism and self-control, of heroism and of faith, which were first so nobly tested in the war of the liberation and which in our own time triumphed so conspicuously in the resuscitation of Germany and its final consolidation in the New German Empire. The influence of the Kantian Ethics upon faith in the supernatural and in the Christian Their Effect verities seemed at first less favorable "''°" in the than upon faith in human duty and supernatural, patriotic self-sacrifice. This may be largely ascribed to the weakness of theology itself, which required a radical disintegration before it could rise to a newer and better life. Whatever may have been true of the immediate effects of the Critical Phil- osophy, it cannot be denied that so soon as super- natural Christianity rallied from its shallow nat- uralism, as it did in fact at the call of many earnest thinkers, it assumed a loftier ethical tone and proposed to itself a more positive and elevated spiritual ideal than ever before. It was doubtless true that Kant was forced by the logic of his own ethical system to dispense with and openly to dis- honor the supernatural and the personal as of com- paratively little consequence in the Christian his- tory, and as even a corrupting element : but the 8 INTRODUCTORY. final eflfect of his teachings, whether by action or reaction, has invested its supernatural facts to those who received them with a profounder spiritual sig- nificance and clothed them with new spiritual power. It may be conceded that for one or two generations the Kantian Ethics have been used as a weapon of effective assault upon historic Christianity in Ger- many, England, and America, while yet it may be asserted with undoubted truth, that his earnest and practical ethical spirit has animated the defenders of historic Christianity with higher and nobler con- ceptions of its spiritual import and enabled them the better to understand and defend it as both the necessity and the strength of modern thought. § 4. It will not fail to occur to many of my read- , ^ ers that the Kantian Ethics became a Influenceupon Speculation significant power in English thought and and Literature in England feeling long before the Kantian Meta- physics had begun to be appreciated or understood. The eloquent Coleridge is usually cred- ited with having been the earliest effective exponent of both. Some literary critics would find in the awakened interest in the romantic school of Ger- man poetry, the first effect of the Kantian impulse. Even if this were so, Coleridge was foremost even in responding to this awakening power and finding in IN-TBODUCTORY. 9 it a more profound and wide-reaching significance. If, however, we limit ourselves to ethics proper we can find no writer who so distinctly and fer- vently insisted as did Coleridge on the need of a better speculative system than that which had been accepted in England, and who also taught that Kant provided for this better system in his distinction be- tween the Reason and the Understanding. The voice of Coleridge was indeed the voice of one cry- ing in the wilderness, bewildering indeed at times, even when inspiring, as is the voice of every prophet, but it was loud and clear in its denuncia- tion of the ethics taught in the English Universities and embodied in Paley's popular text-book. The present readers of Coleridge's criticisms of Paley and his expositions of Kant, find the last seriously defective in scientific exactness, representing Jacobi rather than Kant; but if they have attained to even a slight measure of the historic sense they cannot fail to acknowledge the signal service which he ren- dered in defending the nobler features of the system taught by Jacobi's great master. Carlyle. as a rep- resentative of Kant, was somewhat later than Cole- ridge, and far less philosophical than he in his pre- tensions and his achievements, though perhaps he was equally fervent in his practical aims. It is of little 10 INTRODUCTORY. consequence which of the two was the more efficient in introducing the new Ethics to the English public, or how large was the share which James Marsh, George Ripley, and Ralph Waldo Emerson might claim in furthering the same general movement in America. Most intelligent readers know that what after Kant was called the Transcendental Ethics attracted the attention and enlisted the sympathy of a large following in both England and the United States, and made itself felt in their literature and their criticism, in their politics, and their theology. This movement led many to new theories of man's moral nature, to new definitions and principles in speculative ethics, and was followed by the most important consequences in their modes of thinking and feeling in respect to the most vital questions of speculative and practical interest. We may say indeed that the Kantian Ethics when conceived in this somewhat indefinite signification has had a far more positive and wide-spread influ- ence in both England and America than the Kantian Metaphysics. The latter has, indeed, of late, through translations and comments, received much attention from speculative thinkers for its own sake and as a preparation for and transition stage to the later schools of German speculation. The former, the INTRODUCTORY. 11 Ethics, has not so frequently been fonnaliy ex- pounded or carefully criticised, while yet it has been accepted by very many in a positive but rather indiscriminating w^ay, as being in its distinctive features eminently worthy of confidence and the noblest work of its eminent defender. The Kantian Ethics as a speculative system or as related to the Kantian metaphysics has rarely, if ever, been the subject of careful and thorough criticism by any English writer. For this reason, if for no other, it is at present the more inviting theme for both critic and reader. The treatment of this subject is not without its difficulties. Some of these difficulties Ditticiilties have already been suggested. Others in Criticising .,, 1,1 1 1 the Same. Will make themselves known as we pro- ceed. Kant is a writer whom it is not always easy to interpret to an English reader, even if his philo- sophical position, his terminology, and his German style presented no peculiar embarrassments. His system, if he can be said to have a system, is by no means so coherent or so closely stated as his uncrit- ical admirers contend, and as some of his commen- tators insist. Let us expect, then, that serious diffi- culties in understanding and criticising him will be manifest as we proceed, and let the expectation 12 IXTRODUCTORY. arouse us to resolute effort. Of one thing the earnest student may be confident, and that is that the ques- tions which Kant proposes are invested with an interest and importance which cannot easily be over- estimated. Whether or not these questions are all rightly handled, or whether the solutions for which Kant contends are satisfactory or disappointing — they are all discussed in a manly temper, and with an effort at thoroughness which puts to shame every solicitation of indolence and every incitement of pas- sion or partisanship. KANT'S ETHICS. CHAPTER I. PRINCIPAL ETHICAL TREATISES — THEIR GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. § 5. Kant's ethical system may be found in the following treatises, which were published Titles of in the order and at the times which are Ethical . ,. ,111 Treatises. indicated below. 1. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, 1785, usually translated as The Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals. 2. Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft, 1788, Cri- tique of the Practical Reason. 3. Die Metaphysik der Sitten, 1797, The Meta- physics of Morals (in two parts, respectively of Rights, and Duties). In order to appreciate fully the relations of these treatises to Kant's speculative system, the reader should scrutinize them in connection not only with one another, but with the Critique of Pure Reason, with which he astonished the world in 1781, and 13 14 kant's ethics. also with his Prolegomena to Every Possible Future System of Metaphysics, which was published two years after, i.e., two years before his first treatise upon Ethics. The treatise entitled The Critique of the Faculty of Judgment (Die Kritik der Urtheils- Kraft) also contains some special ethical matter. In all these treatises Kant endeavors to be consistent with himself, aiming in each to be true to the fundamental principles which he had laid down in respect to the sources, the authority, and the im- port of every description of knowledge. In the Critique of Pure Reason, published four years before his first ethical treatise, he says very little of morals, although it is evident from the little that he does say that he had anticipated very distinctly the difii- cult questions which would be forced upon his atten- tion by the logic of his philosophical theory; that he faced them resolutely, and to some extent anticipated the solutions which he subsequently expanded and defended in his formal treatises on Ethics proper. § 6. The Critique of Pure Reason, it hardly need be said to those who have read a The Critique of Pure few pages, is painfully thought and often painfully expressed, apparently to the writer and certainly to the reader. It is charac- teristic of this volume that in it Kant seems to PRINCIPAL ETHICAL TREATISES. 15 be a seeker, rather than a finder, of" trutli in liis aims and his processes; that at many points and turns he seems more or less uncertain of his own position, and to take unwearied pains — not always successfully — both in thinking himself clear and in expressing his meaning clearly to others. The probable and even possible inferences which might be derived from his doctrines by his inquirers and antagonists seem to intrude upon his attention at every step, and he is constantly tempted to pause and turn aside from his onward course to explain or overcome these objections and difficulties. § 7. In the Pi'olegomena, written two years after- ward, he writes in a different tone — rpj^^ assuming and maintaining a different Prolegomena, attitude. Throughout this work his air is that of a combatant who is sure of his position and con- fident of victory. He writes like the discoverer of an " open sesame" to all future metaphysics of whatever sort, which he has only need to shout and at once every secret metaphysical door will fly open. Instead of inquiring, he propounds; in- .stead of arguing, he explains. The very title of his treatise indicates his position and his feelings, it being a triumphant proclamation of what had been found by himself to be necessary for all future 1(> kaxt's ethics. metaphysicians by the experiences and failures of those who have gone before. The style and diction are in full sympathy with this new attitude. The writer is simple, cheerful, and almost defiant in his tone. His opinions are propounded, not inferred. He does not delay to answer objections: he scarcely notices them. He simply lays down the law, as one who is justified in speaking with authority. The Prolegomena is confined to speculative meta- Relation to physics, and leaves all ethical questions Ethics. untouched. But the Critique had fur- nislied some distinct anticipations of Kant's ethical system. To these he was impelled by the desire to set aside the objections which might be urged against his speculative conclusions so far as these had been reached, viz.: that speculative knowledge, as such, is only trustworthy or valuable so far as it can explain the possibility of experience: urging that if it be true that neither the Soul, nor the Kosmos, nor God can be reached by the pure reason, then it follows that ethics must be the final arbiter which alone can give us solid reality of any sort, especially con- cerning the Soul in its relations to the future life and the Supi'eme. The way in which ethics can render this service is explained by Kant at some length in the second FHIXCIPAL ETHICAL TKEATISES. 17 chapter of the Transcendentale Methodenlehre, Zweites Hauptstiick, in which he outlines the ethi- cal system whicli lie developed four and seven years afterward in the classical ethical treatises already named {cf.%% 5, 11, 12). This preliminary outline deserves a brief notice, if for no other reason, because it serves to explain the original transition or connecting bridge which was designed in the mind of Kant to transfer his readers from his speculative to his ethical theory. It may l)e compared to the rough outline or hast}^ sketch of what afterward became an elaborate drawing, or, more exactly, to the germ of what afterward grew into a fully developed gi-owth. We prefer to explain these relations here, in order that the intimate dependence of the two parts of Kant's system may be made more clear. We do not care to decide which of these theories was first developed, or was first suggested to his own mind. We very well know which was first drawn out in the detail of explanation and defence, lint inasmuch as we find this ethical germ snugly imliedded in this spec- ulative environment, we shall find it convenient first to explain this environment, that we may analyze the germ itself, and follow its subsequent development. § 8. It is well known that the question with 18 kant's ethics. Critique of which Kant sets off in his Critique of Pure Reason p^^.^ jieASon is this : Are synthetic Fundamental •' Question of. Jiidf/nteiifs (i pHori possible? Are there such judgments, and how are the}' to be accounted for? The first of these questions is, in Kant's view, answered in the asking. No one will deny that there must be such judgments. Otherwise there could be no science, no mathematics, no logic, no physics, and no psychology.* Every one of these sciences may be traced back to certain comprehensive judgments which are synthetic, i.e., to propositions of which the predicate is not contained in nor implied by the subject, but in which it is affirmed of or super- added to it by a direct and intuitive affirmation. As such an affirmation enlarges one's knowledge, it is called si/iitJietir, in contrast to one which merely an- alyzes or expands the import already affirmed of its subject, and as it does this by a direct assent of the intellect without the intermediation of reasoning, it is called a priori. Examples of such knowledge are: Two right lines cinniot inclose a space. All bodies are extended. Evenj event is caused. Psi/chical phe- * The advocates of the doctrine (hat ethics furnislies the foundation for speculative truth of every kind might tiud in tliis argument tlie justification of their position thus: inasmucli as without science man cannot live a human life — llie life worthy of a man, to which his higher aspirations, faith, and convictions c()ini)el liim — it follows that these synthetic speculative judgments must be true. PRINCIPAL ETHICAL TREATISES. 19 nomena are experienced hi siicressio)/. The possibili- ty of such propositions is still further explained by ultimate data, which are given by and to the pure reason, in connection with the operations of intui- tion, as these are exemplified in the outer and inner sense and in the higher processes of reasoning. These data are the forms of Sense, which are Space and Time, the Categories of the Understanding, and the three Ideas of the Reason, viz.: the Soul, the Kosraos, and God. Without these a priori relations and the concepts and propositions that depend on them, Kant argues at length there can be no ra- tional knowledge. In every description and degree of knowledge, even in the lowest, more or fewer of these a priori elements are recognized or implied. § 9. It is also to be noticed as a capital feature of Kant's system that the materials of Phenomena knowledge, i.e., its a posteriori elements vs. Things in . T he ni Strives given by experience, as contradistin- guished from those relations which are given a priori, are assumed to he pheiiomeHa — spiritual or corporeal — but are not things at all, i.e., not things in tJieniselres. When we face the sense- world, we do not discern things or realities, but only phenomena, as sights, feels, and smells, etc. So in the spirit world we are conscious only of sensations, 20 KANT'8 ETH10!5. imaginations, and thoughts, but not of oitrsclres as seeinof, hearing, reineiahering, or imagining. Wliat men are accustomed to conceive as realities by emi- nence, i.e., the realities of the material world, and mayhap in the view of some, the realities of spirit — these are only phenomena as contrasted with things in themselves, i.e., solid realities. These phenomena we connect in groups, by sense-forms and thought- categories, calling a group of sense-phenomena a tree, a house, or a horse, uniting them as substance and attribute, as cause and eifect, etc., but never at all reaching things in themselves, Dinge an sick. These remain ever beyond our reach, ever eluding our grasp. The nearest semblance of real oneness which we can come to is some unity of apperception which we can revive or modify after an order or scheme of the imagination derived from time and space relations. In contrast with these sense-objects and sense- groups of phenomena we grasp after ° Noumena. Noumena, i.e., intelligible realities, as possible and actual. We come nearest to these when we seem to be conscious of our own Ego or self, but even then we find that what we seize is but an illusion — an illusion of thought or a figure of speech. However imposing and compli- PRINCIPAL ETHICAL TREATISES. 21 cated these may seem to be, they are only plic- )ioiii('Ha, suggesting, it may be, the iioiniiriKt. the tilings which can never be reached. When, however, we rise to the highest forms of knowledge, other a priori elements present themselves and seem to be required to make possible our highest moods of ex- perience, possible or rational. These are the so- called Ideas of the Reason, viz.: the Soul, the orderly Kosmos, and the Self-existent, or the Absolute: God! Without each and all of these a priori elements, we can neither employ nor apply the lessons of expe- rience, we can attain neither speculative knowledge nor practical wisdom. And yet, for all this, we have no scientific authority for believing any of these objects of thought to be real, although we can- not avoid reasoning and acting as if they were so. i; 10. This is a brief statement of Kant's specu- lative system and the position into which Limits of it brings man in respect to his con- Human fidence in the speculative reason. Phe- nomena are known and knowable, and only phe- nomena, phenomena external and internal — never things in themselves. Noumena are neither knowa- ble nor known. Phenomena are connected with one another by I'elations a priori of space and time, also by the relations of thought, making complete the 22 kant\s ethics. semblances but never revealing the realities of either things or spirits. Both these again can be con- nected, i.e., regulated by the ideas suggested by the mental and material universe, both being dependent on and united by. the uncreated God. while yet these ideas are vouched for by no absolute and TREATISES. '40 Xor is it of any consequence whether they are or are not reconcilable, or whether they have any com- mon root. The prescription of reason still remains supreme. Do flxft ichir/i is rif/lif. ^ 12. In respect to our highest good, however, or the sintiiiuim boHiiin, the question of Ti,ree impor- the mutual relations of what is and ^f " Q^e^^^io"^ 1 ropof e« by ought to be, is most important. The Kam. satisfactory answer to this turns upon the three inquiries: What am I knoir'f Wlmt oii(/lif I to do? ]VJt((t tiiai/ I hope fofi:' TJie first of these questions had been partially but unsatisfactorily answered in the terms: I can know only phenomena, not nouinena or things m them- selves. I can also know their relations in some sense, provided it be not what might be called their nature or essence. TJie second, being practical, can- not be answered in terms of intellectual knowledge, inasmuch as intellectual knowledge only gives us an acquaintance with phenomena, but never with reali- ties or things in themselves. The third, however, is both practical and theoretical, and in fact is answered thus: You can know that the something which you hope for will be, because it ought to be. You can know there is a God and a future life, because both must be, in order that virtue may be 26 rant's ethics. rewarded and vice may be punished; or, in other words, that what ought to be must be. In other words, tlie problem of knowledge, which, as a prob- lem of the speculative reason, has hitherto been un- solved, and baffled all our attempts to explain it, is settled by the impei-ative demands of the practical reason. The comprehensive principle which is the basis of all practical knowledge, and indirectly of all knowledge whatever, is the principle that the virtuous ought to be happy. They cannot be happy unless there is another life. They cannot be happy unless God exists to reward them and to punish the bad ; or, more comprehensively, unless certain sem- blances or phenomena of things are conformed to things as they are, i.e., to things in themselves. § 13. Whatever on second thought we may think Plausibility of ^^ ^^^^^ argument, it cannot be denied His Solution. ^Ij^i- ^^ ^j.^^ yjg^y -^ gggi^^j. plausible, and for the reason that it recognizes moral relations a.s 2) I'ctcti call 1/ supreme — and if ethical relations are practically supreme, they are not only themselves speculatively true, but they impart authority and validity to certain relations and things which are purely speculative. When tried by the criterion of the realities of common sense, w^hich holds to the possibility of the knowledge of nouinena, at PRINCIPAL ETHICAL TREATISES. 37 least in the world of spirit, which recognizes a community of relations between the intellectual and the ethical universe, common sense asserts that the ethical and the emotional stand high- est of all rational considerations as grounds of truth and evidences of realit3\ But when viewed against the background of the Kantian scepticism, which limits all knowledge to phenomena, and. after denying the capacity of reason to discover the objective truth which it yet asserts must be as- sumed, comes in to help reason out of the ditch into which it had plunged it, by requiring it to abandon its own appropriate functions, the argument is not likely to be so readily welcomed as a helper. The blow which first strikes a man to the earth, if it is a blow of dishonor, is far more likely to be remem- bered and resented than the helping hand which is subsequently moved in condescending pity to lift him up. Unsophisticated and logical common sense suggests the thought that if the mind be as limited in the range and authority of its knowledge as Kant has written a long book to persuade us is true, then we can know only the relations of phenomena, in ever\' form or method of reasoning, the specula- tive and practical alike. Likewise when I reason that T shall live another life because I ought to be 28 rant's hthkjs. rewarded or punished, and shall find a God living to deal with me iiccordiiig to my deserts, then I have already assumed tlx' i-cality of two uoiimeiia at least, if not Ihe reality of three; certainly that of the conscious Ego and God the rewarder, and, it would seem, of the Kosmos, as a permanent noumenon, with its changing phenomena of a here and a hereafter. i; 14. I)i»nl)l less Kant easily persuaded l)imself, oiiiiKiitioii t.. "^^ ^^^ many of his readers, that he re- CoiiHisteiicy. li^ves himself from this a[)parent in- consistency by his view of the superior character of ethical relations. But he cannot thereby evade the obligation- to be consistent with himself. He tells us, indeed, thnt the practical reason not only affirms certnin relations of conduct, by syn- thetic judgments h priori, but that it also en- forces them in the f(jriiis of command. He asserts, moreover, that these commands involve relations of merit and demerit, and that these i-o([uire a being who is able and willing to enforce them. Hut he forgets altogethei' to recognize the truth that in all these assertions he lias overstepped the limits within which he had entrenclKid hiinsell: Ihat every one of these ethical demands supposes noumcna in the form of personal beings — that only the Ego as an exist- PKIXCIPAL ETHICAL TREATISES. 20 ing being, and not at all as a phenomenon, can respond to a command or apprehend merit or a pos- sible iiii mortality, and that all the plausibility that his argument gains when regarded as a proof for the Ego, or a future life, or an existing God. is derived from the dexterity, or, rather, we should say. the unconsciousness, with which at the critical or turn- ing points of his argument Kant adroitly substitutes the noumenal for the phenomenal, and interchanges the relations which are appropriate to each. That moral relations and moral interests may be the most convincing of all in respect to the continued exist- ence of the soul, and that the moral constitution of the soul may be the one transparent medium through wliich we gain and keep our faith in the moral pei'fection and righteous government of God. are both most important truths. These truths lend color and plausibility to Kant's ethical remedy against the scepticism he had created: but they cannot in the least justify or alleviate the sugges- tion of the scepticism with which he had pi-eviously cut the nerve of our confidence in every description of truth, whether rational or ethical, ii 1"). It should be remem])ered that This Soliilion this exposition and defence which Kant Pi-ciiminaiy has furnished of his ethical theorv is ' 30 rant's ethics. merely an anticipation of what he subsequently expounded at lengtli in his two principal treatises. As we have already stated, the attitude which he assumed with respect to his ethical system became more positive and assured after the publication of the first Critique. His statements became more and more dogmatic, his defences more assured, and his illustrations more complete. He never, however, parts with his intellectual dignity, or loses aught of the most complete self-respect or reverence for his own pei'sonal uprightness. Thus far we have been occupied with these ethical anticipations only, as we find them in the Critique of Pure Reason. It was four years after its publi- cation that he took a more positive attitude, and gave to the world the Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals. Die Grundlegung zur Meta- physik der Bitten. ITS-"). In this treatise he proposes to himself the task of positively determining what are the ultimate grounds or fundamental ejements of moral science, as preliminary to the Critique of Practical Reason. So far as the titles of these two works would indicate a ditference in them as objects or products of thought, the first would be an analytic search for the principles of the science of dutv. and the second a critical examination of PRINCIPAL ETHICAL TREATISES. 31 those functions of the same reason which originate and sustain these principles or conclusions. The second treatise, which in a sense was a supplement, or completion, of the first, was published in 1788, three years later. § 16. In scrutinizing these treatises, we need to be reminded, first, that it is not easy Kanfs under any circumstances to thread our j^""thVaiui way through the mazes of Kant's anal- Absolute, yses and argumentations. Especially is this true of his ethical writings, for the reason that man}^ of the underlying practical truths which give color and dignity to his discussions are so elevated and weighty, and in their applied signification seem so axiomatic and self-evident. Whether or not they are scientifically exact, they are unquestionably in some practical signification clothed with the highest authority. Hence, in reading Kant's ethical writ- ings, we are often exposed to the danger, and this is often serious, of confounding popular with scien- tific propositions, and of attaching a metaphysical import and philosophical authority to distinctions and propositions that are simply practical, and popular. To avoid this danger, the following observations ma}' not be out of place. A sharp distinction should be made and held 32 Kant's ethics. between those metaphysical principles* which are relatively and those which are absolutely primitive and fundamental, i.e., between those propositions which are axiomatic to one science and a group of sciences, on the one hand, and those which, on the other, are fundamental to all the sciences and to scientific thinking as such. For example, it will not be questioned that a few physical sciences rest upon certain principles which are peculiar to themselves, and yet are common to them all. The relations being common, the concepts and principles are com- mon. When grouped together, they constitute the metaphysics which is common and fundamental alike to all the physical sciences, as mechanics, optics, chemistry, etc. Similarly, each individual science has its own metaphysics, and we speak briefly and confidently of the metaphysics of mathematics, of chemistry, etc. Similarly, we speak of the meta- physics of the organic or vital sciences in common, and of the metaphysics of plant and animal life in special. Similarly, it may be supposed that there may be special and general metaphysics of all spirit- ual beings in common, and of the intellectual, emo- tional, and voluntary activities in particular. *Por variety in the signififatioii of Principles see Porter: Iliunan Intellect, § 514. PKlJSrCIPAL ETHICAL TKEATISES. 33 § 17. We observe here that the special meta- physical principles which are funda- Fnndamentai Principles mental to ethics have the very peculiar of Ethics attraction of beino- easilv apprehended ''^"'^^'^^'"'^*"'" " .'11 gtood and by, and, so to speak, accessible to, all Assented to. men. They commend themselves to the assenting convictions of all. More than all, they appeal to the emotions of mankind, and to the emotions which are the strongest and most tender. They are clothed with the most sacred authority, and evoke the noblest and the most disinterested of the affections. For these reasons it often happens that men who deny all other axioms, because per- haps they cannot understand them for the general or abstract language in which they are phrased, cannot withhold their assent to the axioms of eth- ical truth, and, for the simple reason that these are the only principles with which they are familiar and which they can understand, are ready to ac- cept them as the only truths which are invested with self-evident certainty. Hence, should the de- mand be made upon them in view of the obscurity or the uncertainty of all other fundamental truths, to accept ethical truths as the possible foundations of all the rest, the demand finds a comparatively ready response. Every other special mpta[)hysics is to their 3 34 • K A NT's ETHICS. mind more or less abstract and unfamiliar, whether it be the metaphysics of mathematics, or chem- istry, or physics, etc. The same is true of general metaphysics, i.e., the metaphysics of everything that is knowable, whether subdivided into spirit and matter, or generalized as being, finite and infinite. B);t the special axioms of duty, the truths and laws which are suggested on all occasions and enforced by universal experience, these are so clear, so severe, and so true that no man can question them. What- ever else a man may question, he will never question these "truths which wake to perish never."' It is not surprising that the mind which is shaken by every other scepticism should not only rest upon ethical truths as unshaken, but should also accept these as giving authority to truth of ever}^ kind, and as being themselves the cornerstones of all knowl- edge and the tests of all our other faiths, whether in man, or nature, or God. § 18. We should never lose sight of the fact that , , . the speculative metaphysics of Kant, as In Speculative ^ ^ Principles presented in the Critique of Pure Rea- Kant Claims Oniya Relative SOU, not onlv failed to procure assent to ion y. itself as thoroughly trustworthy, but formally renounced for itself any other than a partial and relative supremacy. While its able expounder PRIXCIPAL ETHICAL TREATISES. 35 contended for the necessity of assuming certain fun- damental principles of the speculative reason as the a priori conditions of all knowledge, he as deliberately and scientifically contends that this necessity is simply subjective and carries with it no objective reality. The forms and categories and ideas which enter into the very structure of all scientific knowl- edge, are held by him to be simply necessary to make experience possible and science trustworthy. The a priori or metaphysical elements are necessary, otherwise common experience and reasoned science would be impossible. But as to whether these sub- jective elements have also any objective reality, he teaches us that we can neither affirm nor deny. It is not surprising that under the pressure of this necessity he should have reverted to the sacred rela- tions of dut}' as the sheet anchor of both science and faith, that in this desperate need the practical axioms of prudence and duty should take occasion to assert their superior attractiveness and authority, nor that the appeal should also be made to them as competent to clear up whatever else seemed ob- scure, and to restore the faith in scientific truth I? which had been deliberately undermined. In other words, it is not surprising that the axioms of a special science should have been generalized so 36 rant's ethics. broadly as to serve as a speculative basis lor the entire truth of the sciences in general, and that the fundamental truths of ethics should be accepted as fundamental, not only to the successful conduct of life, but to every description of knowledge whatever. § 19. The reasons why such a transfer and con- fusion of in'inciples and of thoucrht Danger of Con- '■ '■ ^ founding would be plausible, have already been Speculative and Ethical e.xplained. That Kant had sought to ""^'^"'''' prove the objective untrustworthiness of any and every form of purely speculative meta- physics, has been made sufficiently clear. As we have already explained, it is no part of our duty to discuss at any length the question whether these attempts to weaken our confidence in this trust- worthiness were successful. That inquiry must be transferred to the critical examination of his specu- lative system. Nor have we as yet attempted to show that his effort to substitute an ethical for a rational metaphysics was a failure. We have only suggested certain reasons why ethical or practical principles might readily be accepted by many stu- dents and readers as fundamental.for all knowledge, when there was no occasion to resort to them, on the one hand, nor any demonstrated capacity in them to meet the demand, on the other. It was PRINCIPAL P:THICAL TREATISES. 37 Kant who attempted to show that they could meet the supiK)sed exicjenev. It is our first „, „ 1 ' o . \\ Q Proceed duty to inquire whether he was sue- ^ext to the Examination cessful. But all this is preliminary to of His Formal our formal examination of Kant's ethi- ^ cal system as a whole. This examination, we may expect, will develop the weakness and strength of his exposition of his views upon every point. Our critical comments, thus far, have been confined to the brief anticipations of his ethical theory which we find in the Critique of Pure Reason.* The detailed exposition of Kant's ethical system is found in the two treatises already referred to. We begin with the first. * Transceudentale Methodenlclire, 2tes Hauptstiick. CHAPTER II. THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. * § 20. This treatise does not profess to be a com- The Metaphys- plete discussion of all the metaphysical ics of Morals ... i • i n i i ^ ^ Tentative principles which are rundamental to *-*"'y- practical and scientific ethics. It is rather a statement of its more important prob- lems, i.e., such as are preliminary to a critical ex- amination of the practical reason or the so-called moral faculty, and to a completed and ration- alized system of duties and precepts as a final result. The treatise also supposes the reader to be acquainted with the author's speculative system as expounded in the Critique of Pure Reason, and the distinctions which that treatise labors to establish. The writer had certainly a right to assume that the doctrines which he had so elaborately ex- pounded in his magnum opus had by this time become familiar to every reader of the later trea- tise, and he does not hesitate to proceed upon this assumption. In this way we explain and excuse the brevity and the abruptness of some portions of this * Grnndlegung ziir Metaphysik der .Sitten. 38 THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 30 his first ethical essay, and the apparent obscurity of some of its allusions. § 21. In the preface Kant directs the attention of the reader to the fact that all knowl- A Metaphysics edge is either /'or/^(f/i or material — the o^'^^ora.i^ Possible. formal concerning itself with the uni- versal laws or relations of thought, without re- spect to its objects, while the material respects the varying properties of existing things as either phys- ical, i.e., necessar}'', or spiritual, i.e., free. He also notices that the laws which respect either may re- spect events as they are or as they ought to be; thus giving the distinction between physics and ethics. Then again, we call philosophy empirical so far as it is based on experience, and metaphysical when it rests on a priori principles. Consequently, physics and ethics may be either empirical or pure, so far as they rest upon either. These distinctions being established, the writer proposes the question whether it is possible to estab- lish a system of ethics that shall be a purely rational science, and as such " perfectly cleared of every- thing which is only empirical and which belongs to anthi'opology."* To this he replies, that such a * We notice here once for all that the doctrine which Kant so often refers to and so often rejects under this title, was the current 40 K ant's ethics. [ihilosophy is possible " is evident from the common idea of duty and of the moral law/' For example, the precept, " Thou shalt not lie,"' is not valid for man alone as man. but also for other rational beings, and consequently its basis is not to be sought in man's human nature, nor in his circumstances. " but a priori simply in the conceptions of the pure reason. * * * Though this or any other precept which is founded on mere experience may be in cer- tain respects universal, yet so far as it rests on an empirical basis, even only as to its motive, such a precept, though it may be called a practical rule, can never be called a moral law * * * Moral philosophy when applied to man does not borrow the least thing from the knowledge of man himself {i.e., from anthropology) but gives laws (/ priori to him as a rational being. * * * a metaphysics of moi'als is therefore indispensably necessary, not merely for speculative reasons, * * * but also because morals themselves are liable to all sorts of corruption so long as we are without that clue and theory received from the aucient schools, that a life of virtue or moral excellence is "a life according to nature," human nature being understood by this term. It is singular that Kant should have over- looked the possible reply to his oft-repeated strictures; that it was human nature g?/a-rational, that was intended, and that the ideal of aspiration and the norm of judgment was never the emotional or the passionate, or, as Kant would <:all it, the empirical, in man. THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 41 supreme canon by which to estimate them correctly. For in order that an action should be morally good, it is not enough that it should conform to the moral law, but it should also be done for the ml;e of tlie law.'' In order to make it clear that the author's theory of ethical ideas diifers from that which was current in his time, he calls attention to the doctrine of Wolf in his Propa?deutic, who contends for the free- dom of the will as the foundation of moral concepts, but, in the judgment of Kant, overlooks altogether the point that it is with acts of pure will, as such, that moral freedom is especially concerned; in other words, that the subjective element of freedom, as such, is not the preeminently ethical element, but that what is distinctively ethical is the a priori, motive with which the will is confronted by and from the reason. § 22. In these terms and statements the author vaguely sketches the theory which he preliminary proposes to explain and defend at length ^^"i,*!',,'!'!."^ ^^"^ in respect to the fundamental concep- ^vstem. tions*of scientific morality, and more than vaguely hints what that theory will inevitably prove to be. The chief points which he has thus far explicitly stated, seem to be the following: That moral relations 42 kant's ethics. are discerned b}' the reason, and by the reason only, and consequently have no discernible or necessary relation to the empirical or emotional nature, which neither enters into their essence nor imparts to them authority. It follows, as it would seem, that he holds that neither the nature of man as man nor as a sensitive, rational being furnishes the ground or enters into the definition of ethical conceptions, but that these distinctive elements are simply a priori, i.e., are a peculiar class of relations, which are dis- cerned and enforced by the practical reason inde- pendently and alone. All this is vaguely assumed in the preface, or intimated as certain to be. the result of the subsequent discussion. It is also man- ifest even to the superficial reader that this preface was written after the essay, and cannot be fully appreciated till the essay shall have been read, de- pending as it does for its interpretation and enforce- ment upon the subsequent discussions of which it gives an indefinite outline or an obscure anticipa- tion. It concludes with the programme in which the author proposes, (1) to proceed from Division of Topics in the the common to the philosophical knowl- Grundlegung. , edge ot morals, (2) irom popular, i.e.., g'Ma.si - rational, morals to its metaphysics, and (3) from its metaphysics to the Critique of THE METAPHYSICS OF MOKALS. 43 the Pure Practical Reason — the second treatise, for which this is the introduction. This pro- gramme, in a general way, is adhered to by the author with no great rigor of method: as is manifest from the digressions and anticipations which characterize his always somewhat rambling discussion. § 23. The hrst section of the treatise Import of his opens with the memorable and often opening , - _ , . Sentence. quoted utterance, that JNothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good without qualification, except a good will." If character is compared with gifts of nature, as intelligence, courage, and gifts of fortune, as riches, health, or contentment, all these are de- fective, " if there is not a good will to correct their |)ossible perversion and to rectify the whole princi- ple of acting, and adapt it to its end." A man who is endowed with every other good can never give pleasure to an impartial rational spectator. unless he possesses a good will. " Thus a good will appears to constitute the indispensable condition of being worthy of happiness. * * * Moreover, a good will is good, not for what it effects, but for what it intends, even when it fails to accomplish its vurposes, * * * as when a man wills the good 44 rant's ethics. of anothev and is impotent to promote it, or actuall}' effects just the opposite of what he proposes or wills." The author anticipates that this last proposition may seem extravagant, and for this reason he sub- jects it to a careful scrutinj^ He urges that if happiness,* as such, were the chief purpose of na- ture, this end would have been more effectually pro- vided for by a simple instinct impelling directly and invariably to this end, instead of being left to the fallibility of the individual reason and the caprice of the individual will. The actual arrangements of nature, as we find them, would seem to indicate that they all suppose adaptation to the occasions and ser- vice of a good will as a good in itself. This good will as a good in itself must be "'the supreme good and the condition of every other, even of the desire of happiness," though it is not the sole or the com- plete good, inferior and accidental goods being often connected with or separated from this as the supreme. § 28. Kant proceeds to reason if we seek to * As though happiness, as sucli. or the production of happiness, had ever been supposed to have any niorjl excellence, or anything short of the i>o^(7)i«ri/ production of happiness, and of the hiirhest happiness at that. .\s though all moralists who are worth considering had not em- pliasi/ed the good will, or tlic willing of good, as the supreme excel- lence. THE METAPHYSICS OF ilOKALS. 45 define this '"good will" — in other words, to define an act of duty — we must first set aside Kanfs liitiT- all those actions which are inconsistent prutation of the Good Will. with duty. JNone oi these can proceed from a "good will.'' We shall also exclude all those acts which are consistent with duty, and yet are done from incliiiafion oiihj, and not with a conscious recognition of them as morally good, (i) An Act T 1 -i. • J 1 ii from Inclina- in every such case, it is assumed by the .. „ ^ •' ' -^ tion Not an author that the act cannot be an act of -'^ct of Dnty. duty at all. As, for example, a trader is honest from good policy only, or a man preserves his life as duty requires, but not because duty re- quires; or, though to be beneficent where we can be is a duty, yet if a man is beneficent because of the delight which follows to his pathological or emo- tional nature, his acts are not acts of duty, "' For the maxim of conduct here wants the moral import, namely, that such actions be done from diit)/, not from inclination. * * * It is in this manner, un- doubtedly, that we are to understand those passages of Scripture, also, in which we are commanded to love our neighbor, even our enemy. For love,* as an * We notice here that Kant doeir not recoirnize the i)ossibiIity that love, or any affection or emotion, shonld be impelled or regiil;ited Ijy the will, but conceives of the will as the controller of the actions only, j.^"., the bodily actions. Consequently, the comprehensive law, '-Thou shall /ove the Lord thy God," becomes to him impossible and nnnieanint.'. 46 KAXT's ETIIIUS. afiPection. cannot be commanded, but only beneficence for duty's sake, even though we are not impelled to it by any inclination, nay, are even repelled by a natural and unconquerable aversion. It is prac- tical love, and not pafJiolof/ical, a love which is seated in the will, and not in the propensions of sense; in principles of action, and not of tender sympathy; and it is this love only which can be commanded." § 24. The second proposition is, " that an action (2)The Maxim, done from duty derives its moral worth, no^ u> IK. ^^^|. £j.Qj^^ j.|jg purpose which is to be at- Moral Worth, tained by it,"' but from the maxim by which it is determined, and that its moral character, therefore, does not depend on the purpose being realized, but merely on the " principle of the voli- tion " which has produced the action. Such a prin- ciple is formal or a priori, as contrasted with a spontaneous or material spring of action. We observe here that by maxim Kant means the action in the mind of the individual, the intended object, when expressed as purposed by the individual, and thus indicating the rule by which he is in fact controlled. (3) Respect S 25. The third proposition derived .?' ^!-. ,'r from the foregoing is, that "dutv is the Essential to o f? ■ Duty. necessity of acting from respect for the THE METAPHYSICS 0f""M0RALS. 47 law. I may have an inclination for an object as an effect of my action, but I cannot have respect for it, just for this reason, that it is an effect and not an energy of will. * * * Jt is onlij what is con- nected with the will as a principle, but by no means as an effect — what does not subserve my inclination, but overpowers it, or, at least, in case of choice ex- cludes it from its calculation — in other words, it is simply the law of itself, which can be an object of respect, and hence a command. •■ But what sort of law can there be, the very thought of which must determine the The Content will, without reference to any effect? °^j™_'*°j'^^^j * * * Every impulse, as such, has Law. been set aside from being a principle. Nothing remains but the universal conformity of action to law in general." In other words, " I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law." What the author intends by this very abstract state- ment he illustrates by an example: I ask, may I ever when in distress make a promise, with the intention not to keep it? We do not ask, Is it never prudent, but is it ever right, thus to do? For myself it may be safe and advantageous, not only in a single in- stance, but in every case. There is a short way to 48 kant's ethics. decide the question, " whether a lying promise is ever consistent with duty," and that is to ask whether such a rule of action can ever be made a universal law. Though I can will a lie, I can- not will that lying should be a universal law. Why this should be, Kant does not here attempt to explain. He would even assert that no explan- ation of this unfitness "" to become a law is pos- sible. This remains as an unsolved problem, and yet somehow we know that a law, to be moral, must be such as can enter into universal legislation; also that it must extort or command respect, and that this respect takes precedence over and sets aside what- ever is recommended by inclination. Moreover, the necessity of acting from pure respect to the law constitutes duty, and is the condition of that good will which is a good in itself, and consequently is the only thing which can be styled good without qualification. In concluding the first section, the author adverts to the fact that the practical reason reveals its dis- tinctions with a simplicity and an authority which are strikingly contrasted with the maxims and pvin- *" Fitness to become a law," it should bo observed, is no adap- tation that is founded in the nature of man, indi\idually or socially; Kant says of it, that it is purely rational, whatever this may be, ami moreover, that it extorts and commands respect. THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 4.9 ciples taught by the speculative reason. Conse- quently, to accept the first, he urges, is eminently safe and wise, even when they seem to be inconsis- tent with the teachings of the last. And yet we are impelled by a necessity which we cannot resist to attempt to reconcile the two, but always with a tenacious faith in the superior commands of the practical reason. § 26. We have already adverted {cf. § 10) to the (/i■ - Kant s Scep- trustworthiness of speculative truth, ticism in Respect to with its forms and its categories, with speculative its ideas, phenomena, noumena. and all, into which Kant had brought himself and would fain bring his reader, as the outcome of the Critique of Pure Reason. We have also ex- plained the deliverance from these entanglements which he anticipated as possible through the cate- gorical imperative of duty, as implied in and en- forced by the practical reason. The principal elements of this concept of dut}- have been given in this first section, as he conceives them to occur in the experience of unreflecting men. To these experiences, as we have seen, he makes his final appeal. Whether his analysis of these experiences is satisfactory in all these particulars remains to be 50 kaxt's ethics. seen, as we seek to subject it to careful criticism before we proceed to an examination of the ampler discussions which follow. We do this at once be- cause this section presents in a brief but popular form many of the distinctive features of Kant's entire theor}', the fallacy of which, when detected and exposed, may aid the reader in detecting similar errors in the subsequent arguments, and especially may sharpen his discernment to distinguish between a popular and a scientific metaphysics of ethics. § 27. Thus far have we been content to explain Kant's argument. We begin our criti- Criticism of Kant's First cism with Kaut's first sentence, an ut- Sentence. , i • i i i i • /> terance which has become classic rrom its fervid tone, and which, when rightly inter- preted, expresses an important practical truth. ''Xofhhtg can jwssibli/ be conceired in the icorld, or even out of it, which can he called good ivithout qualification, except a good iriJI.'' To this propo- sition, as an utterance of practical ethical truth in popular language, the adherent of almost every ethical theory would give his ready and fervent assent. But as uttered by Kant, it expresses the metaphysical principle (in technical language) that moral goodness has no relation to any other good- ness; that it is not only superior in quality to THE METAPHYSICS OP MORALS. 61 every other, but cannot properly be classed or com- pared with any other. As accepted with equal posi- tiveness and fervor, as it may be and often is, by those who dissent from Kant, it asserts the incom- parable and unquestioned superiority of the moral among the other kinds of good with which it can, and, as it would seem, iinist be compared, in order that its supremacy may be manifest. As applied by Kant, it asserts that there is but one real good, "good without qualification,"' and that is moral good, which cannot be defined in terms of any other, and which certainly cannot be classed with any other, and as it would seem can be compared with no other. As assented to by those who dissent from Kant's philosophy, it would require them to substi- tute the phrase, "the supreme good," for "good without qualification," meaning by " supreme " the "best in quality or kind,'' as distinguished from the most energetic or intense. § 28. The "good will'" which either is or brings so great a good, in the view of those who Diverse dissent from Kant, is an act or state of Meanings of the will, a voluntary choice or love of the highest or supreme natural good, which for this reason is both logically and actually superior to every other, "a good without qualification,"" "a 52 KANT*S ETHICS. good beyond compare." The difference between the two positions is explained by the fact that, according to Kant, the good will is determined by no impulse of or motion in, the sensibility, eitlier felt or dis- cerned, but by the simple authority' of the reason, which utters its dictum or command without a reason. Hence the good will which is recognized (as "a good without qualification'" is a will deter- mined hy the reason onJij, not merely in spite of certain lower impulses of the sensibility, but inde- pendently of any motives whatever which are ad- dressed to any sensibilities that are higher. Ac- cording to the dissentients from Kant, a good v^^ill is an act or state of will which responds to a mo- tive that addresses the highest or best natural sen- sibility. The choice of such a good, but not the chosen good, is the morally good will. It would seem that when Kant's proposition was thus fully and fairly stated, it would at least fail to command unquestioning assent, if it did not in many eases elicit a positive dissent. And yet it is not difficult to understand why it should frequently seem to be axiomatic and self-evident. It strikes the key-note of Kant's ethical system, revealing its apparent strength and its real weakness. It finds its apparent strength in its homage to the higher THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 53 impulses, which it would fain exalt so high that they should seem to rise above the region of the sensibil- ities proper, and to float in the empyrean of the pure reason. It finds additional plausibility in the em- phasis which it lays upon the will as the centre and source of all human responsibility, when contrasted with the sensibility and intellect, either or both. Its weakness lies in its oversight of the fact that it is only through the sensibilities that the will can act morally at all, by energizing and controlling them — this oversight involving the depreciation and almost the contemptuous disesteem of the feelings as psy- chical experiences, and justifying the inference that the emotional or pathological in man's nature, even when animated and controlled by the will, is not only not moral, but is positively immoral in its functions and its products. The opponents of Kant find no difficulty in assent- ing to every one of his utterances as true and im- portant, so long as they read between the lines their own interpretation of the terms and propositions. But while they accept with all their hearts his lead- ing propositions when thus modified, they must pro- test against the dishonor done to the sensibilities as either an immoral or an unethical element of char- acter. They would say emphatically, while it is 54 KAKTS ETHICS. true that mere sensibility, except as it is penetrated and directed by the will, has no ethical character whatever, it is equally true — a fact which Kant overlooks, and would almost seem to deny — that an act of mere will, except as it animates and controls the sensibility, is equally unethical. Thej^ accept the doctrine that " a good will is not good because of what it performs or eflfects, nor b}' its aptness for the attainment of some proposed end, but simply by virtue of the volition," and yet reject the inference that it is ''good in itself," if this implies that no good, i.e., no sentient good, is in fact intended, pro- posed as a maxim, felt as a motive, or obeyed as a law, by this masterful good icill. § 29. As we follow the argument of Kant, it Kant's Defect- would seem as though he was led to ive Conception 1,1 n pi- 1 • of His Oppon- ^i^i^P^ct the soundness or his exclusion ents' Doctrine, gf sentient good as an essential ele- ment of the satisfactory definition of a good will, when he urges that, were happiness the end of man's existence it were better and more economical for na- ture to bestow happiness on him without the hazard of freedom, taking on herself the choice not only of the ends of human life, but also of the means for their attainment, and with wise forecast intrusting both to " instinct" — as though anyone had contended THE METAPHYSICS OV MORALS. 65 or dreamed that any single element could constitute the " good will." How could he overlook the fact so often emphasized by himself, that the element of freedom must be prominent in the intelligent choice — as we say between higher and lower forms of natural good — in order to impart to it a qual- ity so peculiar that it alone could deserve to be called "good in itself"? Is it not Kant himself who contends that if nature would adapt means to an end, " its true destination must be to produce a will, not merely as a means to something else, but good in itself, for which reason was absolutely necessary"? Here the question cannot but suggest itself, if reason was absolutely necessary to this good will, why might not freedom also be necessary (contrary to his sup- position of instinct), and if freedom and reason, why might not sensibility be also required, with its capacity for and its impulses toward higher and lower natural good, even though it must also be vol- untary and directed by reason in order to obtain an ethical value and to rise to the unmatched excel- lence of " the good will." § 30. But from the position that the " good will" is a "good in itself," Kant easily Kant's Limited glides into the conclusion that it must !^"*^ °Z * ° Conception of control every other good, even " the Happiness. 56 rant's ethics. desire of happiness," as though these two could in any sense be coordinate or come into conflict. We notice here, and intreat our readers never to lose sight of the fact, that " happiness " and the •' desire of happiness," are invariably used by Kant in a special and sensuous import, being limited to the animal and other lower affections as contrasted with the rational and higher. It will hardly be cred- ited, and yet it is true, that an analyst and observer ^ ^ . so acute as Kant fails to discern that Gratification "ftiie "the gratification of the reason'' in- Reasoii. volves the existence of one at least of the higher classes of sensibilities as springs or motives of action, implying the possibility of a peculiar kind of happiness, and this although imme- diately in this connection he observes that " the rea- son recognizes the establishment of a good will as its highest practical distinction, and in attaining this purpose is capable of a satisfaction of its oivn pecu- liar kind, viz. : that derived from the attainment of an end which again " is determined by the reason only, notwithstanding that this may involve many a disappointment to the ends of inclination." No language, it would seem, could be more explicit in asserting that the reason and '' inclination " have each its appropriate sensibility, dependent on its special THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 57 conditions, indeed, and its peculiar laws, but both be- ing capacities for emotion and involving enjoyment or suffering of differing kinds and degrees. There can be no escape from this interpretation, unless the satisfaction peculiar to reason is limited to that which follows voluntary action. But in such case it could not be brought into competition with inclina- tion proper, and would have no meaning for Kant's argument. There can be no escape from the conclu- sion that Kant implicitly, if not avowedly, more than once recognizes a natural happiness which reason gives and which competes with inclination, even if he did not explicitly recognize the ethical principle of Aristotle, that one of the conditions of rational satisfaction is the attainment of the end or purpose of one's being, or the acting according to nature, — which last Kant uniformly interprets as involving empirical as opposed to ethical relations. § 31. The next topic which is discussed by Kant is the conception of duty. The first j^^^^^, characteristic which he notices is that Defective Conception duty implies an activity of the will of Duty and ■ . 1 • 1 Ti • r Obligation. against conscious hindrances. It is a fa- vorite and an oft-repeated doctrine of his that an act of duty must be positively indifferent or disagree- able to the natural sensibilities. He even formally 58 rant's ethics. defines " Duty as a compulsion to a purpose or aim unwillingly adopted." Moreover, unless an act is performed from a sense or motive of simple duty, whether the person is or is not impelled by inclina- tion, the act is not morally good. For this reason, those acts to which we are impelled by strong nat- ural sensibility, may fail to be morally good in spite of this fact, and, in a sense, in consequence of it. All of which is true, but not for the reason given or assumed, that the element of sensibility is a vitiating element, but because it is the rolmitanj ele- ment alone which determines the moral quality of the action, not as antagonistic to sensibility of every sort, but as it selects between the lower or higher natural sensibility, i.e., chooses between the higher and lower natural good. It is also worthy of notice that Kant fails altogether to discriminate between internal and external acts of duty, usually limiting duty to the latter, i.e., to the henejicent act as contrasted with the benevolent volition — limiting the sensibility to acts only as thus defined and con- ceived, and appropriating the voluntary and re- sponsible to the internal. In still further elucidation of his other Oversights theory, he observes that right actions must "be done from dutv, not from in- THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 59 clination," as though it were not equally true and no paradox to say, that if such acts were not done from inclination, i.e.^ were not voluntary or volitionized, they would not be acts of duty at all. Under the necessities of his theory, he does not hesitate to affirm that those passages in the Scrip- tures which command us to love our neighbor and even to love our enem}^ do not respect the feelings or volitions of benevolence, but only the duties of beneficence, for the reason that love and forgiveness cannot be the subject of a command, practical and not pathological love alone being a matter of duty. We need use no words to explain how inadequate is this view of the reach and import of the moral law as explained in the Scriptures, which not only insist that love is the fulfilling of the law, but that if love is wanting, though every conceivable act of beneficence should be performed, not a single act of duty is done. The truth which misled the author is the commonplace truth that duty, if it be ethical and genuine, must show itself in acts, else it is hypocritical or hollow, and hence acts, as well as purposes and feelings, are insisted on as the exter- nal and bodily stuff of which duty is made and through which it is manifested. The truth which Kant caricatures is that the will, as distinfjuished 60 kant's ethics. from the sensibility, is the only possible subject of the law of duty, and that what the sensibilities are in their impulsive energy and proportionate energy, depends partly on the individual temperament and culture. For this reason, and for this alone, the acts and not the feelings are the measures and prac- tical tests of duty. § o2. Kant's second iiroposition concerning duty Kaiifs ^•''' ^''^^ ^^ derives its moral worth, not Second Error. fj-Qm the purpose or end which is to be attained b}^ the act, but from the principle of the volition wliich pervades it. If he means that the actual fulfilment or execution of the volition does not decide its moral quality, he asserts an impor- tant truth, but if he means, as his words would imply, that the subjective moral character of the act of duty is not determined by what we object- ively intend or morally prefer, he commits a se- rious speculative and practical error. The contrast which he sets up. between the principle of the will and the expected or chosen end in the act proposed or its result, cannot hold. To call the one formal and a priori and the other material does not avail except to the ear. Kant's third proposition respecting duty is thus expressed: "Duty is the necessity of acting from THE METAPHYSICS OF MOEALS. 61 respect to the law." In this definition respect is opposed to inclination, the one being ^^.^^ concerned with the regulation of the en- Mistake. Respect for ergy of the will, or the activity itself, the Law a and the other with the anticipated effect of an act. That respect on the one hand, and desire or inclination on the other, are properly con- trasted we do not deny, but we deny altogether that respect is not pathological and emotional, albeit that both as sensitive and impulsive it is distinguished from the lower sensibilities. We dissent from Kant's assertion that we cannot have respect for a feeling or an inclination in ourselves and others, although we grant that, to become an object of re- spect, such a feeling must be vivified by the will and the product of self-command; but the response of respect which it exacts is none the less emotional in its nature. § 33. It is interesting to notice that at this stage of the development of Kant's Conceded to be theory, with the first introduction of an " obscure Feeliu"'." " respect for the law" as an essential ele- ment or condition of duty, he recognizes the objec- tion as possible that this respect for the law must in some sort be an " obscure fed'oKj."' This difficulty he attempts to evade by explaining the nature of the 62 kant's ethics. feeling by the object which occasions it, as a concept of the reason, " the law only, and that the law which we impose on ourselves." All which does not tend to take respect out of the category of feeling, but only fixes it more firml}^ within it! Let it be ob- served here that it is with the subjective state of the man that we are concerned, not at all with the object which occasions it. Leaving this difficulty unsolved, it being assumed that the law as such commands respect, Criterion of an Act of our author proceeds to inquire, What kind of a law is that which is clothed with this moral authority? To this question he replies, Only a law which is fitted to be a universal maxim, I.e., " I am never to act otherwise than so that I could will that my maxim should become a universal law." This position he illustrates at length in answer to the question whether it is ever right to make a promise with the intention never to keep it, giving a variety of reasons why any other rule of conduct than the one which in this case he approves would be unfit to be a universal law. These reasons we need not state. It is enough to say of them that they are all considerations of coiiipa/ibiliti/ or incoiit- patiJtHihj irifli liKiiiiiH irell-hciiKj. In this case at least, so far as the reasoning of the author has an}' THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 63 meaning, the fitness of a course of conduct to be a uni- versal law is argued on grounds of its tendencies, or the consequences, good or ill, to the natural sensibili- ties, if the conduct supposed were occasionally or con- stantly put in practice. The self-asserting and self- asserted majesty of the law, which will bye-and-bye emerge in the autocratic grandeur of the categorical imperative, is here by the author's own showing rep- resented as simply an appeal to that instinctive desire for or sympathy with universal well-being, which is supposed to be dominant in every human breast. In all this it is also assumed that the human reason dis- cerns certain ends which are revealed in this consti- tution of man, individual and social, and which are capable of being recognized by every thinking being, as laws to his own will and to that of his fellow man. It also supposes that with the well-being of the uni- verse and its necessary conditions every man has a dis- interested sympathy, latent or active, and so becomes a lawgiver to himself as he interprets these ends and designs, and recognizes nature and God as impos- ing and confirming them as moral law. This law is eminently reasonable and self-confessed, and there- fore is responded to with emotions of honor and respect, which are none the less sensibilities because 64 kant's ethics. attended, when the reflecting judgment comes in.* with self-ministered and self-inflicted joys and pains. § 34. Thus far we have followed Kant in his attempt to effect a transition from the Second Sec- tion of Kanfs " common rational knowledge " of mo- rality to the philosophical, within the domain of common intelligence. We proceed next to the second section, in which he treats of the trans- ition from the popular philosophy to the metaphysics of morals, proposing hereafter to interpret and criti- cise him point by point — changing our method to that of a running criticism. The first position which Kant takes, and to the KanfRACTlCAL KEASOK. 179 useful manner, and one adapted to tlie loftiness of the subject? Examples may serve in this as a warn- ing, and also for imitation. The contemplation of the world began from the noblest spectacle that the luiman senses present to us, and that our under- standing can bear to follow in their vast reach, and it ended in — astrology. Morality began with the noblest attribute of human nature, the development and cultivation of which give a prospect of infinite utility, and ended in — fanaticism or superstition." § 90. The answer which we should give to this pregnant inquiry of Kant is the exact practical opposite of the conclusion which he de- g^prem^g^and rives from the critique to which he has if'olated. subjected the practical reason. We should say that ethical phenomena and laws are as truly the subjects of scientific investigation as those which are physical. Misdirected agencies and imaginative theories in both lead to mischief of every species. It is only as we understand the nature of the subject-matter of both that we can adopt a true method for either. With this interpretation we should heartily adopt his parting words: "In one word, science (critically undertaken and methodically directed) is the nar- row gate that leads to the true doctrine of prac- tical wisdom, if we understand by this not merely 180 KANT^S ETHICS. what one ought to do, but what ought to serve teachers as a guide to construct well and clearly the road to wisdom which everyone should travel, and to secure others from going astray. Philoso- phy must always continue to be the guardian of this science, and although the public does not take any interest in its subtle investigations, it must in the resulting doctrines which such an examination first puts in a clear light." § 91. This rhapsodical conclusion of this elaborate Critique reminds the reader of the title Comments on the of the last chapter of Dr. Johnson's Rasselas, viz. : " The Conclusion in Which Nothing is Concluded." The imaginative meditation of the eloquent writer upon the starry heavens and the law of duty is both impressive and elevating; but the vague replies to our most serious questionings with which it puts us off, and its indefinite resolu- tion of our philosophic doubts, only serve to aggra- vate the keenness of our disappointment. The first of these treatises which we have reviewed, the Grrundlegung, had professed only to prepare our way for moi'e exact analyses and more scientific inquiries. It left us with the equivocal consolation of being at least made fully acquainted with the reasons why the ultimate concepts and axioms of THE CRITK^LK OF PRACTICAL REASON. 181 ethical science must in some sense be ultimate and incomprehensible. But notwithstanding this dis- couraging intimation, we were encouraged to hope that the Critique of the Practical Reason might not only clear up the incomprehensibilities into which the earlier ethical treatise had plunged us, but that it might redeem the hope or promise which had cheered us on our thorny path, viz.: that the analysis of the practical reason, in dissipating its own difficulties, would restore our confidence in the decisions of the speculative reason. But, alas I at the end of our toil we are informed that the axioms of ethical faith are rooted only in our own ineradicable conviction of their i^ractical importance, and that they scarcely seem capable of either scientific formulation or phil- osophic adjustment; while the practical reason itself is so far from going farther than this, or from rendering its proifered and promised aid to the speculative, that it can best satisfy its own needs and that of its elder sister by looking up to the heavens in an attitude of wondering worship, and down into the heart of man in reverent faith. We confess ourselves surprised at this conclusion, after the long trial to our patience from the scholastic terminology, the acute criticism, and the sharp in- sight with which these treatises superabound, all of 182 kant\s p:THicft. which had prepared us to hope that all these prepa- rations would have given us something more than this effusion of the imagination, truthful and eloquent though it be. The conclusion also suggests a thought which, in our opinion, is of no inconsiderable importance as an explanation of the charm with which Kant's original researches continue to be invested, and of their power to excite and hold the minds of men long after the original questions, as Kant proposed them, had taken new forms, and been expressed in new terminology. Kant's extraordinary power to attract and hold his readers seems to lie in that rare combina- tion of metaphysical acuteness with imaginative verve and inspiration, by which he is distinguished. Not unfrequently he seems to lose himself and to bewilder his readers in the entangled maze of his over-refined analyses and his barbarous terminology. On other occasions he sinks in helpless discouragement under the weight of those transcendental ideas which his philosophy is forced to recognize, but is incapable of defining and defending by his own chosen termi- nology. In these extremities, however urgent, his imagination never fails to find language in which to give expression to those faiths which he has the magnanimity to confess are "the light of all our see- THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON". 183 ing," while his glowing rhetoric lights up the thorn- iest maze of abstract reasoning with a radiance which extorts the wonder of the admiring reader, even when the argument, thus illuminated, fails to commend it- self to his cooler judgment. For this reason, among many others, it seems to us that the watchword. '''Back to Kant,'' will long be repeated and responded to even by those students of philosophy who find no occasion to accept Kant as their master. CHAPTER IV. A CRITICAL SUMMARY OF KANT'S ETHICAL THEORY. § 92. AVe begin with Kant's doctrine of the The Practical pfcictical veasoH. The introduction of eabon ^j^j^ appellation by Kant excited wonder Described. and Called forth criticism from many quarters. How can there be two sorts of reason, was asked by his critics, and with what propriety can reason be designated as practical at all? In answer to these queries, Kant denied that be held to two kinds of reason, but sought to justify the double application of the term by explaining that it was occasioned by the difterence in the subject-matter* with which reason has to do, and the consequent difference in the relations or attributes which it is supposed to discern. While the speculative reason is concerned with the attributes of fact or truth, the *It is pertinent here to ask, however, whether, according to Kant's own analj'sis, oliligation, or the nucleus of the same, must not first be experienced or felt, before It is discerned, i.e., whether some form of sensibility and its relations, rather than the intellect, does not fur- nish the objective material oi moral distinctions, contrarilj' to his entire thcorv. 184 SUMMARY OF KANT*S ETHICAL THEORY. 185 practical is limited to attributes of action and of duty; the one affirming what is true and should be assented to, the other what should be done or effected ; the first implying knowledge , and the second obi iff a- tioii. It may be questioned, however, whether the language which he used, and the illustrations and arguments which he employed were not all fitted to leave the impression that the diff"erence was in no wise limited to the objective matter of intellectual assent; but was also extended to the subjective character of the processes by which ethical truth is responded to or obeyed. At all events, it is certain that Kant intended that, as in the phenomena of speculative reason the intellect alone is concerned only with relations of fact or truth, so the practical reason im- plies only relations to the will, and enforces relations of duty. It would follow that the will, being the necessary correlate of the intellect, acting as the practical reason, both logically and actually, might also occasionally be used by Kant interchangeably Avith it — the practical reason discerning and enforc- ing obligation for and upon the will, and the will subjectively responding to this relation in its free- dom under a sense of mere authority. § 93. It is also a fundamental truth with Kant, and oft repeated by him, that the authority of its 186 kant\s ethics. commands is not derived from the goodness of that Whence Its which is Commanded; but that an act Authority. ^^ morally good because it is commanded by the reason. No action is commanded because it is good, or as being good; but it is good because and in so far as it is enforced by the practical reason, it being first simply commanded and accepted as morally right, and thereby becoming morally good. It is not enforced as morally right, because it is desirable, or excellent, or good; but is good because it is enforced as right by the reason. The sense of obligation, moreover, it should be noticed, in all cases supposes a reluctant, even though it be an obedient will. A being who responds to the judg- ments of the practical reason without a conflict, — showing that his emotional and active nature is already in harmony with the moral law, — has no sense of obligation, however complete his holiness, and the decisions or judgments of the practical reason do not assume for him the power or force of law. Such a man is a holy, but not a virtuous man. § 94. The practical reason of Kant seems at first How Related thought to be identical with the " supe- to Butler s ^.•^^, p^.^j^g^-^jg Qf reflection or conscience " Principle or '^ •■ Reflection. of Bishop Butler, whose functions are thus defined; it "distinguishes between the internal SUMMARY OF KANT's ETHICAL THEORY. 187 principles of his heart''; it "passes judgment upon himself" and other men; it "'pronounces determin- edly some actions to be in themselves just, right, and good," etc., "without being advised with"; it ''un- questionably exerts itself, and approves or condemns him the doer." Butler recognizes in these features " a prerogative or natural supremacy of this moral faculty," or, as he once calls it, "the moral reason," and contends that "we may have a clear conception of the superior nature of our inward principles to one another," and gathers the result of his analysis into the pregnant conclusion that "this is a constituent part of the idea — that is, of the faculty itself — and to preside and govern from the very economy and constitution of man, belongs to it. Had it strength as it has right, had it power as it has manifest authority, it would absolutely govern the world." These and other assertions of Butler seem to be almost literal translations of the language of Kant in respect to the practical reason and the categorical imperative. It is worthy of notice, however, that Butler finds in these doctrines only illustrations and confirmations of the truth held by the best Greek schools, that the nature or constitution of man is the norm or standard by which moral distinctions are tested and enforced, and that the rule " to follow 188 rant's ethics. nature," or "to live according to nature," was in his view broad enough to provide for every special ethical direction. While Butler appears to agree with Kant in holding the categorical imperative, he differs from him in finding the enforcement of its authority in the constitution of man as its powers and ends are interpreted by himself. That is to say, as against Kant, he founded the authority of con- science on the matter of its commands, as contrasted with their mere /orw. This difference, expressed in other language, would be as follows: While Kant begins with a simple dictum of authority, Butler explains and enforces this authorit}^ as an interpre- tation of the ends of reason, as manifested in the constitution of the soul and the universe of God, and enforced by their ultimate authority. Instead of a categorical imperative, Butler furnishes an imperative that is hypothetical, enforcing its dicta with the implied condition. If you would act accord- ing to the nature of things, or the ends for which you exist, you will do or avoid so and so. It is true, he assumes the nature of man to be so and so. Eveiy occasion of doubt will bring up the ques- tion. Is this nature such as you assume it to be? By what methods or tests we are to discover and determine this nature, with its subordinate SUMMARY OF KANT'S ETHICAL THEORY. 189 or supi*erne ends, Butler does not explain. Indeed, he attempts no analysis or explanation, or ver\' scantily, of what he means by conformity to nature, being content with a few positive and disconnected utterances, which he does not attempt to reconcile or adjust with one another, either by psychological introspection or metaphysical analysis. The very elaborate preface to his sermons is in- structive and suggestive in respect to all the points to which we have referred, and particularly the gen- eral truth that he relies on the analysis of man's nature for the determination of the purposes for which it exists, and the normal uses to which it should be applied. It is particularly worthy of notice that the authority of this "superior principle of reflec- tion " is partially explained by its being other than a " propension " or impulse. It is true that Butler, like Kant, in words attaches to a simple thought-object a lawgiving power over an impulse, and there leaves the analysis of obligation; but he does not, like Kant, exalt a metaphor into a theory, and hyposta- size an abstraction into a fancied personality, called the categorical imperative. In this he may have been Kant's inferior as a poet, but he was his superior as a philosopher. § 95. The next question is. What rule of duty is 190 kant's ethics. imposed by the moral reason? It is one thing to determine that there is a moral law so Kant's Ob- jective Rule far as this is implied in the reality of the of Duty. , • 1 practical reason, and another to determine what this law requires, or what is its import. This question Kant proposes, and labors earnestly to an- swer. He is also clearly aware that it is a question which moralists of all the schools have labored ear- nestly to answer, some saying, Do that which will make j^ou perfect or happy, or that which will ac- cord with human nature, or that which will please God. Indeed, it is with the answers to this question that all theories of morals are chiefly concerned. The answer which Kant gives is simply: That conduct is right which when accepted as a maxim, i.e., an ac- cepted or working rule, is fit to be universal. In other words, universality or universal fitness {for wJiat is not said) is the one criterion which should test every moral law. The application of this criterion, as we have seen, is illustrated by several supposed cases. But all of these supposed cases are not only varied examples of adaptation to an end, but of an adapta- tion to an end which is presumed to be naturally good, involving as the or as a fundamental relation, that of adaptation to natural well-being as an end or law. If it were urged that Kant's criterion, as SUMMARY OF KAXT's ETHICAL THEORY. 191 he insists, involved nothing which is worthy to be called matter, then the j^i-inciple would be merely formal, as he contends it ought to be — and this, the identical proposition that like every fundamental or original axiomatic criterion it should be universally applicable. This, as we have seen", would be a very safe but a very useless proposition, which would impart no information and be exposed to no denial. § 96. The next element of moral quality which requires attention is qood or ill-desert. '■ ^ Good and The practical reason, according to Kant, m-desert ac- cording to not merely commands to duty, but it Kant and teaches or declares that the obedient will is deserving of good as a reward. While the authority of its command can in no sense be possibly derived from the natural good which lies beneath or follows after the virtuous act that is required, yet if this command is obeyed, the conclusion follows with equal positiveness. that the obedient act and the obedient man deserve only good. In this way do we gain our completed con- ception of the sumniuiH bonuin as including, _yi!">',s^, the good will, which is itself the supreme and ultimate good which is to be followed for its own sake and obeyed for its autocratic authority, and next, the reward which it merits, which completes the circle 193 kant's ethics. of possible blessings as involving every kind of good that is conceivable, i.e., the snmmtim honum. No reason is given for this connection of natural with moral good as its reward. Its propriety with its consequent authority, according to Kant, is to be accepted as an ultimate fact. In this doctrine Kant also reminds us of Butler, when he says, " Our sense or discernment of actions as morally good or evil, implies in it a sense or dis- cernment of them as of good or ill-desert" (Diss. II.); " Upon considering them or viewing together our notion of vice and of misery, there results a third, that of ill-desert." These judgments, like the others, according to Butler, are not, as was taught by Kant, original and inexplicable, but " Our per- ception of vice and ill-desert arises from and is the result of a comparison of actions ivith the nature and capacities of the agent.'''' By what process or on what grounds he would connect the two. or what is involved subjectively or objectively in the act of comparison is not explained by Butler. Nor is this necessary for our purposes. It is enough that we notice that he grounds the connection of the two upon the consideration of the end for which the moral being exists, and to which his powers are adapted; in other words, that the relation of good SUMMARY OF KAXT's ETHICAL THEORY. 103 01- ill-desert is derived from the relation of fitness or suitableness to the end or intention or idea of nat- ure, and is not, as is held by Kant, an original or axiomatic truth of the practical or moral reason. In other words, so far as good or ill-desert is con- cerned, Butler derives the concept of moral from that of natural good, which Kant so positively repu- diates, both in form and in fact. § 97. The will, as related to the practical reason, according to Kant, is the capacity in man Kant's to determine himself to action by the ap- Doctrine of prehension of the laws which the reason imposes. So far as this will is not determined by any of the natui'al impulses of the sensibility, but obeys the behests of the practical reason, it is called free, i.e., free from sense or material motives. Yet in being free from these laws it accepts and obeys the moral law. Natural law, however, it should be remembered, pertains only to phenomena, and not to things in themselves. It is apprehended of and enforced upon phenomena as they occur under the form of time, in order to make experience possible. On the other hand, the power to accept and. so to speak, to en- force moral law, pertains to things in themselves, or noiimeiKi, of which causative power is affirmed, 13 194 kant's ethics. but not relations of time. Through the practical i-eason we reach reality, the Ding an sich, the Ego, or the soul, the nature and reality of which we have previously striven in vain to discover. This reality, however, is not given directly to conscious experience or intuition, but it is given hnpliedly so far, and so far only, as reality is involved in the moral law. We do not assert freedom as a posi- tive endowment of which we are immediately con- scious, but we discern freedom as logically involved in the conscious fact of obligation. We do not say, I can, therefore I ouf/Jit, to choose so and so. i.e., to exercise or assert^ my freedom, but / otifflit, fJtereforc I can. We are reminded here of the familiar lines of Emerson, which were doubtless inspired by some of the memorable and spirit-stirring utterances of Kant: "So nigh is grandeur to oiu" dust, So near is God to luaii. When duty whispers low, 'Thou must,' The youth replies, 'I can.'" The meaning of the poet, at first thought, seems to be obvious, but on a second reading the question might still arise, whether he did not after all have a glimmering reference to the Kantian interpretation, SUMMARY OF KANT's ETHICAL THEORY. 195 and find in its paradox a poetic mystery. Some would say the more paradoxical the statement the more profound the truth. But on second thought most readers will hnd in its stirring appeal the ut- terance of the most solid of truths, that of a sense of inward power aroused by the trumpet call of duty. It should be observed that the will is also called by Kant the practical reason, because the truth which it assumes and enforces is the moral law, in- volving the idea of duty, which this will acknowl- edges by its subjective assent to its authority, even when it disobeys its commands. This moral law with its objective authority, moreover, is distin- guished from a mere maxim of the will, which may be defined as an}^ special rule which is in fact accepted by the individual man for himself, and which may be more or less completely conformed to this comprehensive rule or law. {Cf. §57.) § 98. Fi'eedom as the ground of responsibility is onlv apnlicable to the noumenon or thing- ^ Freedom in-itself, it being excluded from phenom- in the Ego en a by the fact that these only obey the law of causation. And yet Kant inconsistently con- tends that causation can connect the noumenon with phenomena for the reason that being one of the categories, it may be applied to phenomena as such; 196 Kant's ethtos. overlooking, as it would seem, that it is only between phenomenon and phenomenon that any of the cate- gories apply. In this way he finds no incompatibility between necessary law and supersensible freedom. By the same rule he distinguishes between a perma- nent or timeless character and a permanent moral state, regarded as the product of will. He goes so far as to affirm that, given a man's character, every act of his could be"predicted as the certain and neces- sary effect of his permanent moral character or state ; while yet for this character man himself is responsible, because as a noumenon he is its origina- tor.* The freedom for which Kant contends in any such application is obviously a conception entirely diffei-ent from that which he had defined as responsive to the imperative of reason, and therefore the negative of an impulse of sense, and in that sense free; it being a positive function which is recognized as the ground of personal responsibility, and finds its war- rant in that direct consciousness which Kant usually treats with supercilious disdain. The InteUiyibJe eliaracfer of the noumenon Ego. as thus explained, is also used by Kant as the basis and explanation of that characteristic disposition to * Of. Kant's Lehre von rter Freiheit, etc., von Dr. Carl Gerhard. Heidelberg: Georg Weiss. 1885. SUMMARY OF KAXT's ETHICAL THEORY. 197 moral evil which lie recognizes as one of the conspic- uous facts of human nature, and which forms the subject of a special essay entitled, " Religion Inner- halb der Grenzen der Reinen Vernunft." In this essay he finds in his ethical theory a naturalistic or physiological explanation of the theological doctrine of man's natural sinfulness or depravity, finding in the reluctance of the sensibility toward the good the ground for the sense of obligation, as elsewhere explained.* [Cf. §§ 25, 31, 38, 61, 69.) * Dr. Kurd Lasswitz (Die Lehre Kaiits von der Idealitat des Raumes und der Zeit, etc. Berlin: 1883, §§51-54) distinguishes tiie / or Ego as first the determining agent of all its products or states, and second as the determined product of its own activities. To the first Ego neither the categories nor the time and space-forms have any application. The second is two- fold, consisting of the self-conscions Ego as known in its several states and objects — its Individual thoughts, feelings, desires and resolves — and the objects given by sense-percep- tion. Both the last are objects of experience, i.e., whether events or beings, the experiences of consciousness or sense-perception, and both obey the law of necessity. All that pertains to the Ego as a state or phe- nomenon, i.e., as a tliought," or feeling, or conclusion, obeys the law of causation as truly as do tliose agents which we call physical or material, including as it does the entire realm,of determined psychical experience. Behind and beneath this is the self-determined Ego,which by an activity of its own originates the individual moral self that appears in con- sciousness as a determined force, and gives character to all that con- sciousness takes note of. The ingenious author insists that Kant in this way intended to provide for two noumena in the Ego — the real, active, self-determining Ego of moral freedom, and the second, which is the complex, or content, of those objects and relations which con- stitute experience and are given in consciousness. Of the first only can freedom be affirmed; over the last the law of necessity prevails. The distinction is apparently valid, and has been recognized by others. Cf. Alfred Holder: Darstellung der Kantischen Erkenntniss- theorie. Tiibingen, 1874, i)p. 6()-64. Cf.'S. Porter: The Human In- tellect, §§ 86, 96. 198 K A NT's ETHICS. § 100. We notice next the relations of Kant's Relation of ethics to his Speculative philosophy. As an b t 109 ^g have seen, in the soul's knowledge of to Specula- ' => tive Truth. i^s own freedom is involved the discern- ment of noumena or things in themselves, as con- trasted with phenomena or events as they appear. Through the knowledge of itself as free it breaks the shell of appearances, which follow one after another, and, so to speak, depend on one another after the laws of nature; and knows itself, the Ego, as a thing- in-itself It, moreover, knows itself as a cause pro- ducing phenomenal effects of its own, yet without disturbing the chain or connection of those causes and effects which follow one another according to natural laws. Its knowledge of the Ego does not, however, involve an insight into its constitution or endowment as a thing in itself, but only as capable of free origination, and this so far only as the moral law implies this power, its exercise, and its products. AVith the capacity to respond to this law, personality is implied, and a possible community of persons and aims or ends of activity which are harmonious with one another. Such a community or kingdom of aims or ends was implied indeed in the statement or definition previously given by Kant of the matter of the moral law as a law which is fit to be universal. SUMMARY OF KaKT^S tTHlCAL THEORY. 199 But fitness implies adaptation to an end, and tlie capacity for harmony between the ends of each in- dividual, as also a harmony with and subordination to the highest end of each and all. It appears from all this that the practical reason in the Kantian system alone gives us reality or things in themselves, so far as to justify some knowl- edge of the soul as a noumenon. The moral law which enforces duty by its command asserts the reality of the Ego as a fact, the nature of which and the law of which it knows only by those phenomena or conscious experiences in which the soul makes itself manifest as an ethical force. § 101. It also establishes the soul's immortality, by the behests of the practical reason. Ethical mi I • 1 • J.- • J. 1 Grounds for ine categorical imperative is not only a ggij^j jj, command that the soul should obey the immortality moral law, wherein are implied its freedom and its actual existence, but it insists that the obedient soul shall be made happy simply because it so requires, and therefore assumes that the soul deserves to become so. So long as it feels obligation it is under the dominion of sensibility, and consequently there must ensue a constant strife between the higher law of duty and the lower or emotional im- pulses of sense and passion. So long as this struggle 200 kaxt's ethics. eontinues, it will fail to attain that happiness which the practical reason — the supreme arbiter — pro- nounces that it deserves. But if it deserves this it surely will attain it, because the practical reason commands it. But if it shall attain a complete harmony between resisting impulse and imperative law, it must continue to exist and consequently for all practical purposes it must be immortal and inde- structible, i.e., superior to any of those natural laws which control or effect those changes in phenomena which occur in time. If the practical reason requires or commands that the soul should continue to exist, it by the same rule demands that God should exist, in order that its own behests concerning the rewards which goodness de- serves should in fact be accomplished through Him. Thus, by an ethical necessity, the reality of certain nomnena or things in themselves and their more im- portant relations are established, so far, at least, as the practical concerns of man require. At the same time the contrast is indicated and justified between man's absolute ignorance of things in themselves, on the one hand, with the exceptions provided for, and the progressive yet limited knowledge which he attains of their relations and phenomena under nat- ural laws, on the other. SUMMARY OF KANT's ETHICAL THEORY. 201 § 102. To the brief summary which we have given of the leading principles of Kant's Further Re- ethical system, we subjoin the follovvinof ^' "" , " "'"'" critical remarks and queries. The first imperative, which we select is the categorical impcrafirr which is enforced and assented to by the practical reason, as an essential attribute, property, or element of the moral law. This is held by Kant to be original and simple and comparable in this respect to any one of those mathematical relations or concepts which we rec- ognize as original. It is also capable of eliciting emo- tions, or one, at least, viz. : that of esteem or respect. The discerned relation of authority is on the one side, and the felt emotion of obligation is on the other. To the recognition of either of these ele- ments as original, whether the objective or the sub- jective, we object that they are unique, and there- fore require an extraordinary claim upon our confi- dence. This claim they are so far from justifying, through their use in explaining " human experi- ence,'' that they contradict the analogies of this ex- perience, while the phenomena for which they are required can be satisfactorily explained by being resolved into other elements. We cannot conceive of a mere fhongJit or Judf/menf of moral import, whether in the general or the individual form, like 202 KANt\s ETHK-'li, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor," or, "Thou shall relieve the hunger of A or B," that is capable of ue- ing self-enforced and thus invested with moral au- thority. The conception of authority seems w^holly disparate with or unrelated to any mere thought or judgment, or any hypostasized rational or intellectual entity. 55 108. We accept the axiom as self-evident that " obligation supposes an obliger,'' as an Personality Essential to analytic or axiomatic proposition, because the word and the thought suppose a person commanding and a i)erson responding, with the correlate emotion of constraint. It would seem to follow that the relation and the feeling it evokes can belong only to one person as set over against another, and under any conditions that might evoke reverence or fear by command or direction. For this reason it is held by a recent writer, Dr. James Martineau,* that these cannot exist or hold except of man as in contact with his fellow-man or as subject to Grod's command. But man is not only a political and a religious animal, he maintains an economy of organ- ization and rule within himself. By his capacity for self-consciousness or reflection he can give law to himself as truly as, and far more completely than, he *On the Relation between Ethics and Religion. London: 1883. Cf. Types of Ethical Theory. London: 1885. SUMMARY OF KAXT's ETHICAL THEOJiY. 203 can give law to others. He can obey or disobey himself, and reward or punish himself with his own complacence or displacency, and therefore can hold or bind himself to the feelings and acts which he ac- knowledges to be right or wrong. It is only as we remember that man is endowed with consciousness; and that consciousness can be thus intensified into reflection; and that man as self-conscious is thereby capable of proposing and imposing ideal ends and laws for himself as voluntary, as truly as for others; and that he can respond to these ideals and laws by his freely choosing will, and can also reflect upon his choices and decide upon their conformit}' or noncon- formity to the law self-imposed, and can reward or punish himself by his own approval or condemnation — it is only as we remember all these facts and relations that we can ex[)Iain obligation and authority in their highest significance, with the correlative emotions of reverence and constraint. These emphatically moral relations are emphatically personal relationships. They are incapable of existing where personality is wanting, and are capable of existing in their highest and most perfect form only where personal relations are most energetic and intense. These facts and re- lations of human experience are not denied by Kant. They are most distinctly recognized by him so soon 204 kaxt's ethics. as they come prominently into bis field of view. At a late period of his inquiries he defines a person as one who is an end to and within himself, and founds on this definition his doctrine of human rights, when he faces the doctrine of rights; but be overlooks personality altogether in his formal exposition of moral obligation and authority, and the categorical imperative. In the exposition of bis ethical theory and the practical reason he loses sight of the significance of personality, with its individual will, its reflecting reason, and its interpreting power, and only comes back to it after having asked leave of the practical reason to justify bis belief in the re- ality of this noumenon within his breast. {Cf. § 72.) § 103. If now it can be made good that the rela- Sense of tion of authority itself, with its attendant Complex and emotion, can be derived from and re- Denved. solved iuto and explained by other known endowments of man's nature, it follows that, neither as intellectually apprehended nor as emotionally re- sponded to, can it be accepted as an original relation or ultimate experience. We mean, of course, when we use language witrh any claim or effort for scientific exactness. We know that as a poetic metaphor or an imaginative expression, such a representation mav be both significant and satisfying; but for this very SUMMARY OF KANT'S ETHICAL THEORY. 205 reason it may be the more misleading when there is any danger of its being mistaken for analytic or exact terminology. If by the practical reason we are undei-stood to mean the reflective reason when it confronts voluntary activities, there can be no objection to such an application of the term. But if the categorical imperative is made to describe a constraining force over the feelings or will, which is supposed to be emitted or to proceed from an intel- lectual judgment or proposition, instead of the activ- ity of a living personality, then we cannot but call it a metaphor and treat it as such. § 104. We prefer our own solution to the Kant- ian, — if the latter deserves to be called The Two an explanation, and not a mere figure of Explanations , , •, /. i 1 Contracted. speech. — because it reiers us to known human endowments which cannot be denied, and recognizes their familiar activit}^ and their universal prevalence, and because it fully explains a problem which the Kantian theory does not attempt to solve, but declares to be inexplicable, and which it then proceeds to envelop in a cloud of imposing imagery, and to speed on the winged woi'ds of a soaring poetic diction. Our solution holds fast to the author- ity of the moral reason and the moral law, as recog- nized bv both Kant and Butler, So far as Butler 306 rant's ethics. recognizes simple authority as the distinctive attri- bute of the moral reason or the moral nature in the way of personification, without any explanation of the natural endowments which make it possible, so far is he fairly open to criticism. So far as he resolves the possession and use of this authority into the nature of man as a reflective and voluntaiy being, so far does he make his theory rational. Another unique feature which remains to be noticed in Kant's conception of obligation, is that he conditions it entirely on the supposed resistance, reaction, or re- luctance of the passions and emotions of the sentient soul. So long as a struggle arises between the reluc- tant passions and the imperative reason — not, be it observed, between the lower and higher emotions, for such a distinction is not admitted by Kant, but between feeling and authority — then, and only then, obligation will be felt. When the passions are all at rest in perfected harmony, then a state of holiness ensues, as contrasted with a condition of reluctant but obedient virtue, and then obligation ceases to be felt or known. " The perfected spirits of the just," according to Kant, have no sense or experience of obligation. A paradoxical statement, like this, can only be accounted for by the necessities of a one- sided theory. SUMMARY OF KANT'S ETHICAL THEORY. 207 § 105. The next point to be considered is Kant's conception and attempted definition of Kant's the moral law. The practical reason, f^P ""^''"" '■ ' of the according to Kant, confronts the will Moral Law. with the categorical imperative. It authoritatively commands the will, but to do or to be what? If it meets the will which, whatever it may be, is cer- tainly a power to do or become something, what does it propose that it be or do? Whether it be in the gen- eral command, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, or in the concrete. Thou shalt will or give him food, there must be a definite kind of feeling or doing proposed or com- manded. What is this command? This question has often been asked, and each answer represents a sepa- rate theory in ethics. To this question, as we have seen, Kant gives no answer except the mere formal rule. See that your law be universal, or fit to be univer- sal — that is, that it admit no exception — when it comes to be applied. What Kant means by this criterion he illustrates by the four oft-repeated suppositions of temptation to personal degradation, to suicide, to an idle and self-indulgent life, and to falsehood. We have seen that in every one of these cases this unfit- ness to be universal is exemplified b}'^ the tendency of the conduct to hinder or mar human well-being. This, Kant would say, is a mere accident of the 308 kant's ethics. mattei-, with which we have nothing to do. It is onl}'- with the actual necessity that the law should be uni- versal that he is concerned, not at all with the fact that the act should always conduce to human well-being. If this be so, then it is the fact that the rule admits no exception; that is, it is its formal universality alone which gives it its binding force. But mere universality, as such, when separated from univer- sal results of blessing, would invest the law with no moral authority. Rather would it be the farther removed from such dignity, the more manifest it be- came that, in its tendency to natural evil, it was con- sistent with itself. Does not Milton truly tell us: " * * * devil with devil damn'd Finn concord holds; men only disagree." The actual universality of a law, or the universal approval of the same, can only be interpreted as the evidence of its manifest tendency to promote the well-being of those whom it concerns. It is strange, indeed, that an eye usually so acute as was Kant's should fail to penetrate so thin a disguise. The examples selected by Kant, as explained by himself, show that so far as the content of the moral law is concerned, in each of the instances supposed, it has solely to do with its bearing on human well- being. Kant does not seem to be aware of this fact; SUMMARY OF KANT'S ETHICAL THEORY. 209 for not only are these the only examples which he quotes, but they are repeated by him again and again, in oi'der to make clear what he thinks of the content of the moral law, and the reasons for its being of universal obligation. Considerations of this sort constitute and exhaust his entire repertory of reasons. § 106. Tills is very remarkable when considered in connection with his constantly repeat- Kant's view ed assertion that the nature of man can °^ 1^13"^'°'^'"' ^ never, as the ancients taught us, explain Moral Nature. the content of the moral law, this being transient matter, the product of arbitrary conditions, and therefore inferior to tJie eternal forms of things, which are supposed to be incapable of change and dissolution. Kindred to this was the assertion, which we shall have occasion to consider, that feeling, as such, and anything which excites feeling, is transient and unstable matter, and therefore incapable of being the element or ground of any rule of duty. The untenableness and the inconsistenc}' of Kant's strictures upon the derivation of the moral law from the constitution of human nature, and upon the defini- tion by the Aristotelian and Stoic schools of virtue as a life according to nature, and their rule of duty as derived from the nature of things in general, 14 210 kant's ethics. together with the dishonor which he puts upon feel- ing as an uncertain and unstable element in the construction of any ethical system, are eminently chai'acteristic of his theory, and are continually pre- senting themselves in one form or another, as stones of stumbling to the ingenuous mind. § 107. Kant's doctrine of the will and of free- Further Criti- dora is obscure and unsatisfactory. It is cism of Kant's ■, ^ p • i_ • i- xi Doctrine of Clear only SO tar as it is negative, t ree- the Will. (Jqj^-^ j^ g^ condition opposed to that of be- ing bound by natural laws, viz.: those laws which govern phenomena and which are assumed a priori to be necessary in order to make experience possible. In contrast with the dominion of these laws, it is asserted that the will is free; or rather it is con- cluded that it must be free for the reason that man ought to obey the moral law. The fact or truth of freedom is not known by conscious intuition. Indeed no positive activity is asserted of choice or selection of one of two conflicting objects or between conflict- ing natural impulses. The belief in freedom, what- ever it may be, is in no sense direct and immediate. It is uniformly held as an inference from another fact or truth. The proposition which expresses our faith is, We ought, therefore we can. The truth that tve ought comes first and the truth that ire can StTMMAilY OF KANt's ETHICAL THEORY. 211 comes last, as implied and enforced by the categori- cal imperative of the practical reason. We know that we can in knowing that we ought. But why or how. we are not informed. It is pointedly denied, however, that we are conscious that we are naturally or morally free. That there neither is nor can be any incompati- bility between freedom and necessity is urged by Kant, and reasoned by him on the ground that necessity pertains to phenomena, while freedom can belong only to noumena. We interpret phenomena by causal relations under natural laws, in order to make experience possible, that is, in order to explain the past and adapt ourselves to the future. We in- terpret freedom of noumena as being something more and possibly exempt from natural laws, even though we conceive of them as causal in their activity within the world of phenomena. But while we know this truth because the exigencies of the moral law force it upon our assent, this is all that we know. We are constrained by the reality of freedom, and accept it as trustworthy simply because it is essential to the assent which we cannot deny to the authority of the categorical imperative. The critic of Kant does not find it very difficult to urge that Kant's axiom, wp oiu/Iit, tJtPrefore we can, 213 Kant's ethics. is an analytic or identical proposition, asserting that as the ground of our conviction of the fact of obliga- tion, there is involved the discernment of the fact of freedom. The circumstance that Kant is never con- sciously responsible for any psychological, as distin- guished from a metaphysical, analysis, does not make it any the less difficult to suppose that he may mistake the one for the other. But of this more in another place. § 108. That Kant does scant justice to the range „ ,, r . and import of those truths w^hich self- Kant's Late ^ andinade- consciousness attests is still more strik- quate Recog- nition of ingly manifest from his scant recognition urpose. ^^ ^^^^ ^^_ design as an element of person- ality and a condition of moral obligation. Freedom implies a choice of a supreme end when recognized as fitted and designed to control free action, per- sonal emotion, and individual activity. This im- plies that a rational universe supposes a harmony to be possible between the best acts of its constituent members, and the best acts and results of all acting together. In the enumeration of the categories of the pure or the practical reason we find no distinct recognition of this fundamental relation as such, and consequently no provision for the use of the same in the analysis or explanation of scientific or SUMMAKY OF KANT's ETHICAL THEORY, 213 ethical truth. Consequently it is not surprising that we find this relation nowhere recognized by Kant as furnishing the explanation of the authority of the moral law over the personal will. We contend that the end for which one or more forces or agencies exist, especially if it coiitrols the combined or conspiring activity of many others, is rightly conceived as exercising authority over all these forces, and acting as a lawgiver and law-en- forcer for them all. If we find any form of natural good appearing to control unconscious existence or instinctive action, it is regarded as invested with authority and imposing the necessity of obedience. If it is consciously recognized as fit to control the ac- tions and results of one who obeys and disobeys its behests, it is conceived as his ruler, which will not be trifled with, as exercising a mastery which is none the less an object of reverence even if the power which it evokes is blind. If a man offends against his own nature, i.e., his own living self, as represented by the purpose which is the law for his being as to its best possible achievements, he acknowledges its right to command when he feels its power to condemn and punish. If he attains any just idea of the excel- lence of the good (the natural good) which he might have achieved, and the badness of the loss which he 214 Kant's ethics. has incurred, he invests such a purpose with author- ity over his will as supreme, having a sacredness which can be compared with no other. But in order that these experiences may be possible these psychological and metaphysical elements must be recognized and applied. Kant fails in both, and consequently fails in the explanation of attaining a good or satisfactory theory of the most important of ethical experiences, that of moral obligation. As if to atone for his failure, he substitutes for it a fig- ment of the poetic imagination, which he invests with the borrowed drapery of factitious disinterest- edness, doing violence at the same time to the most sacred and inextinguishable of human aspirations, the realization of its highest natural capacities of de- sire and impulse, and displacing the rights of the supreme reason by the pretended claims of a blind impei'ative which owns no allegiance to the nature of man, but authoritatively issues its unreasoned de- mands, in response to which it requires an unemo- tional and an unreasoning will. § 109. It is not to be wondered at, that in the logical and natural consequence of this ° Kant's Failure double defect — subjectively in respect to to do Justice freedom, and objectively in respect to purpose — Kant should fail to recognize the ethical SUMMARY OP Kant's ethical theory. 215 significance of personality. In psychology he knows no other Ego than a noumenon capable of the sole function of reverently responding to an irrational moral law, the authority of which it blindly respects and freely though reluctantly follows, while in sci- ence it is known by its reflex in a synthetic apper- ception of the unity which it imparts to the objects of knowledge. The self-conscious Ego, as a choosing and loving being which knows its powers and possi- bilities by its self-conscious judgment, and proposes aims to itself which it imposes as laws ; which, as will, chooses or refuses the good which is made possi- ble by its capacities ; and which by these, as stand- ards, measures and judges its acts and attainments — of all this he knows nothing as the foundation of his ethical conceptions or emotions, but, instead thei-eof, gives us the dry scaffolding of a merely logical hypostasis which he illumines with the weird light of fantastic illustrations. When he approaches the sphere of concrete real- ities and touches the realm of the actual, it is not surprising that he recognizes the importance and significance of personality; especially when he treats of the doctrine of human rights in his Metaphysik der Sitten. § 110. Kant's dogmatic depreciation of the ^16 Kant's ethics. emotions in his ethical theory is open to the most „. ^ . decided criticism. From the beffinningr His Deprecia- ° ° tion of the to the end of his expositions he excludes Emotions and the any recognition of the sensibilities in ' ' ^' faculty or manifestation, for the compre- hensive reason that they are necessarily changeable with the individual, and consequently are incapable of any fixed relationships which involve permanent and universal worth. In this general position, which is constantly assumed or asserted, Kant overlooks two considerations; the first that the sensibilities as such are no matter of ethical valuation or authority, but only the sensibilities as energized and regulated by the will. It is not the positive strength of any or all of the passions, as a natural or a hereditary endowment, nor the relative intensity or energy of any one when thus estimated, which is praise- or blame-worthy, but it is the positive strength of one or the relative energy of many as the expression of the individual will, that constitutes character, and is the object of ethical approval or condemnation. While it is true, as Kant contends, that sensibility or emotion, as such, is involuntary, accidental, and arbitrary, and subject to all manner of caprices, it is equally true that the emotions as volition- ized are susceptible of constant relations with an StJMMAKY OF KANT^S ^:THICAL THEORY. 217 ever-varying material, and that under an endless variety of energy and activity there may be con- stancy of proportion under the controlling energy of the central will. Man's natural sensibilities of every sort, his responsive loves and hatreds, his sympathies and antipathies, seem as changeable and capricious as the lawless wind; but whenever and so far as they meet in conflict and measure their claims by the highest possibilities of human nature, so far do they admit a standard, a law, a sentence and its execution; in other words, so far do they provide for moral relations, making them both possible and necessary. Tlie second consideration overlooked by Kant is, that the will without sensibility is incapable of stimulating or directing activity, lacking, as it does, any material to regulate, and the motives which might give life to the moral purposes, and warmth and energy to the inner life. Kant's will, without feeling, is simply a capacity for responding to duty and inspiring to outward action by demand of the reason, without involving the emotions. The re- sponses of such impulses must consequently be colorless and cold. Should the affections glow with saintly or seraphic ardor, with self-sacrificing benev- olence or heroic self-control, so far as the devotee of duty finds in his conscious delight in the exercise of 218 KANT^S ETHICS. any, even the highest sensibilities, an aniniating impulse or a ground of satisfaction, as contradistin- guished from the simple imperative of the moral law, so far, according to Kant, would the morality of his motives be weakened and dishonored, and the purity of his affections be soiled and smirched. Moreover, he teaches that a command to love, or to exercise or indulge any emotion, is absurd in the eye of reason, which could issue in no moral result were it obeyed. The categorical imperative, he tells us, requires acts, not feelings, for with feelings it disdains to concern itself. It would seem when love becomes most pure, according to Kant's own theory, that it is no longer an activity of reluctant duty, but an inspii'ation of aspiring holiness, but at that instant it ceases to have any properly moral quality, because it is swallowed up in an afflatus of emo- tional sympathy. So far, too, as its subjective as- pects are concerned, the form of virtue which Kant would sanction and cultivate is manifestly apathetic and unsympathizing. It is stoical rather than hu- mane, self-relying rather than benevolent; if it is self-governed and just, it is cold and hard. From what we learn of Kant's personal character and his domestic education, we are confirmed in the conclu- sion which would be suggested by his speculative SUMMARY OF KANT's ETHICAL THEORY. 219 system, that bis own morale was chiefly concerned with acts rather than with feelings, at the same time that it was severe in its principles and uncompro- mising in its requirements. His speculative and practical views, as it would seem, were also largely affected by his antagonism to the fanatical emotion- alism of Rousseau, who was in his eyes the repre- sentative of speculative and practical sentimentalism, and very naturally found little favor with the ex- pounder of the categorical imperative and the practi- cal reason; It is beyond dispute or question that Kant was the expounder and representative of an entirely different practical theory, and it seems equally ob- vious that the reaction which he represented was equally extreme in the opposite direction from Rous- seau. Nature, however, will have her revenges, and so we observe that Kant does not always succeed in overlooking or eliminating the element of feeling. He is too honest and logical to the truth of human experience entirely to overlook the AcJitiiiig, or es- teem for the law, which he confesses is conspicuous in human experience, although he strives to square it with his theory by denying that it is properly an emotion at all. The elevating and self-satisfied peace of a good man he was too true to nature to deny or overlook, and yet the dominant spirit of his 220 kant's ethics. system was sharply and strongly antagonistic to feeling or emotion of any kind, either as a specula- tive or practical element. § 111. We notice the intellect nal services to which Theinteiiec- the Kantian Ethics have been applied. tuaiAppii- ^Yg jj^^g alreadv adverted to the impor- cation of .,1 Kanfs Ethics, tance which Kant ckimed for his practi- cal as a supplement to the speculative reason. We have also stated the course of thought by which he made it to command the soul on its allegiance to duty to accept such truths as the existence and im- mortality of the soul and the being of God. Such positive and extraordinar}' claims for experiences so commanding are imposing by reason of the con- fidence with which they are urged and the impor- tance of the truths which they are supposed to make axiomatic. That the demands of duty extend to the nse which we make of the intellect in its search for truth is most obvious, and that the fidelity with which we respond to these claims often determines the results cannot be denied. But it does not follow that the occasion for the interposition of the so-called practical reason is precisely what Kant represents it to be, or that the method by which it supplies the needs of the speculative reason is that which his theory of its nature supposes. SUMMARY OF KANT'S ETHICAL THEORY. 221 § 112. First of all there is, we conceive, a subtle but fascinating haziness in the concep- Authority tions of Kant and many other schools in °^ pj^^c'if"*^*^ respect to the evidence, authority, and Questions. trustworthiness of experience, especially in our ethi- cal activities. That is a simple haziness of thought, if it be not sometimes a mystic dogmatism, which con- ceives of experimental and ethical knowledge as in its nature more positive and satisfying simply because it is unlike the ordinary processes of the intellect when applied to other than matters of faith and duty. When it is said in common life that experience will test ethical truth as nothing else besides, or when it is declared that the honest conscience de- cides many a sophistical doctrine to be incredible, however plausible and unanswerable it may seem to be; when it is said by Kant that it is in order that experience may be possible that we are forced to ac- cept and assert as a priori the forms of sense, the cate- gories of the understanding, and the ideas of the rea- son, we assume that the knowledge given and tested by experience must be trustworthy, not directly be- cause of its practical importance, but rather because men will not trust the interests of their daily and personal life to any other than to such satisfying evi- dence as is sun-clear and sun-bright. It certainly 222 kant's ethics. cannot be good logic or good sense to reason simply that because men must live, or gain any other good, therefore the knowledge which they must accept in order to live must always be reliable, and that for this reason the relations of time and space and the other a priori conditions of experience must in some sense be trustworthy. And yet it may be both good logic and good sense to reason that our confidence in any knowledge which is actually tx'usted in ex- perience must be as clear and as self-evident as the light. On the other hand, it may be true that to the practical appeal, II faut vivre, the reply is sometimes pertinent, Je nen vols pas la necessite. Similarly, it sounds very satisfactory to say that the practical reason of the conscience requires that we believe in freedom, immortality, and God, because the moral law commands us so to believe, and to rest on the acceptance of this ignava ratio, that we must discern facts or relations to be true, because other- wise faith, and duty, and hope, would be impossible. But this is the logic of Kant, and it is by buttresses of this sort, if his meaning is rightly interpreted, that he would support what he thinks to be the tottering pillars of faith and conscience. That when opposed to the analysis of speculation, Kant's ethical fervor has often been efl:ective, when re-cast and re-inter- SUMMAEY OF KANT's ETHICAL THEORY. 223 preted by the unreflecting good sense of many readers, we do not deny. That he has often been a most effective assertor of the speculative and practi- cal authority of moral truth and religious verity, we do not deny, but that this renders any the more trustworthy his uncalled-for concessions of the limit- ations of the speculative reason, and his equally un- authorized extension of the functions of the practical reason, we do not believe to be true. Notwithstand- ing the fervor of his assertions of the authority of ethical and his occasionally eloquent expositions of spiritual truth, it may be seriously questioned whether the honeycombed scepticism of his specu- lative theory has not occasioned unmeasurably greater mischief than his magniloquent and occa- sionally really eloquent utterances for freedom and immortality and God have been able to prevent or to cure. There cannot be the least objection to the trial of every system of philosophical truth by ethical tests, provided these tests are legitimately applied, but to assume that there are two kinds of evidence which have no common foundation and which require a dif- ferent or an irreconcilable logic, the so-called logic of the intellect and the logic of the conscience, is to accept a fundamental logic which will be found to be 224 rant's ethics. irreconcilable with either science or faith. In the reasonings which we have emploj^ed in this treatise, from the practical features and tendencies of Kant's own system, to its speculative weakness or truth, we constantly assume that what is speculatively true will commend itself as such to the unsophisticated common sense and permanent convictions of man- kind, especially when these are tested by the trying exigencies of practical life, because we believe that all ethical and spiritual convictions stand on definite and discernible speculative foundations. This truth may suggest the last topic of criticism, which is none other than the relations of Kant's ethical and speculative system to the Christian ethics and to theistic and Christian truth. § 113. The Christian ethics are characteristically Kant's Ethics Severe, uncompromising, and authorita- andthe ^-^^^ ^^ ^j^^ ^^^ hand, while they are Contrasted. singularly sympathetic and tolerant, charitable and humane, on the other. The Kantian ethics are certainly no more elevated in their practi- cal ideals than are the Christian; assuredly the}^ are no more positive in asserting the authority of the moral law. We may perhaps concede that the two systems in spirit and requirements are equally rigor- ous and uncompromising. But in respect to the SUMMARY OF KANT's ETHICAL THEORY. 225 gentler and the more sympathetic affections, they scarcely belong to the same family. Emotion in all its forms is the very soul of the Christian system. Feeling is the consummate flower of Christian virtue in all its varied hues of tenderness and sympathy. In the theory of Kant sensibility has no place, except a place of weakness and inferiority. It never is recognized as capable of being strengthened and hai'dened by the will, while in the Christian system, if emotion be wanting, whether in its severer or its gentler forms, its absence is considered a sign of special defect. The tolerance and forgiveness of Christian virtue is scarcely provided for by Kant's speculative theory or his practical rules. Marcus Aurelius is immeasurably more Christian in the char- acteristically Christian emotions than is the unsympa- thizing Kant, who is always stern, though sometimes sublime in his rigid severity. So far as he relaxes at all from the rigor of his ethical tone, he is either evaporated into an imaginative sentimentalism which rises above the range of human sympathies, or is crys- tallized into a rigid stoicism which prides itself on its formal perfection. For any practical application to the affairs of common life, his teachings and spirit are singulai'ly unfitted, and for this reason his ethics have been known and practised chiefly among the 15 236 kant's ethics. ranks of the artificially cultivated, while the Chris- tian moralities have been most distinctl}^ recognized and most effectually honored and most consistently practised in the homes and societies of practical men, who have been schooled to the ethics of common sense, by the trials and conflicts of ordinary life. § 114. The relations of the Kantian ethics to the- Reiatioiisto istic and Christian truth should not be The^stic and overlooked. In the ethics of Kant, God Christian ' Truth. is a scientific necessity, whose presence in the moral universe is required, that He may bestow upon the virtuous the reward which they deserve for their obedience to the moral law. Inasmuch as the practical reason not only commands obedience, but pronounces that the obedient will deserves to be made sensitively happy, some agent or agency is required to execute its behests, and therefore God is demanded and accepted by the faith of men. Inasmuch, how- ever, as the good which He bestows is sentient good, and this in the Kantian system is inferior to moral good, the relative place which the Supreme holds in His own universe is by necessity a secondary and inferior one. He is artificially and awkwardly at- tached to the practical reason, as a marshal or sheriff', in order to enforce the moral law, and cannot but suffer in the respect of those who believe in SUMMARY OF KANT's ETHICAL THEORY. 227 Him, by reason of this single function, for which alone He is made necessary to their faith. His entire administration must consequently be weakened in its acts and its functions by the circumstance that it addresses the hopes and fears of men. in place of their conscience and moral will, inasmuch as the Kantian estimate of the emotional nature places it out of all relation to the conscience, and degrades the motives which it addresses to man's sensibility to a confessedly inferior authority. Hence the natural theism of Kant, which at first aspect seems to be exalted to the highest supi'emacy over man, even to the judgment seat of the conscience, and conse- quently to stand on the firmest foundations, is prac- tically and fatally weakened by this practical antag- onism between duty and sensibility. The same weakness makes itself more manifest when the Kantian ethics encounters the Christian system in its supernatural Personage, with His miraculous doings and His authoritative commands, with His personal affections, His promised rewai'ds, and His threatened displeasure. While Kant affects no se- crecy, and is chargeable with no affectation in the homage which he renders to Christ as the embodied ideal of moral perfection, as both the example and the inspirer of the ethical life of Christendom, he at 328 kant's ethics. the same time treats His claims as the pei'sonal ruler of the world's life as did Herod of old, in- vesting the rightful Lord of the moral universe with a robe of mockery, and putting into his hands an idle sceptre. The Christian history he is compelled by the stress of his ethical system to hold to be impos- sible, or needless, or unscientific. While as a sym- bol the Christian history is worthy of all respect, yet as a supernatural fact it is impossible, needless, or mercenary. As a revelation it is simply impossible, because the ideas and truths which it professes to impart cannot be communicated unless the elements are already in the possession of those to whom it claims to make them known. If these elements are already present, they cannot be enforced by super- natural authority, inasmuch as their natural and in- dependent energy cannot be increased by any extra- neous additions. The axiomatically ethical and spir- itual truth which is slumbering in every man's con- science must be left to be developed, sooner or later, by natural agencies, under the operation of existing laws. This revelation is also useless. If adequate agencies exist, the faith in the moral economy which pervades the universe forces us to believe that no supernatural interposition will be furnished when natural appliances suffice. It is also demoralizing SUMMARY OF KAXT's ETHICAL THP:OKY. 229 when contrasted with higher and purer intluences. All conceivable supernatural influences, in the Kantian judgment, address the personal sensibility and appeal to the pathological emotions. Interesting as these may be, and practically effective in the actual affaii's of men, when ethically judged they must be relegated to a lower plane than those which the practical reason presents when it addresses man's autonomous will. Indeed, properly speaking, these influences have no ethical value, but are simply auxiliary to impressions that have no place within the moral in men. If not always anti-ethical, they are at least unethical. The personal character of the Great Exemplar, though it incarnated the ideal of human excellence, and so far is transcendentally elevating, gains nothing in purely ethical force by being real, but rather loses, inas- much as it blends with the purely ethical the per- sonal, which appeals to the affections rather than to the conscience, and moves upon the self-centred im- pulses rather than the simple sense of duty. What- ever may be urged in support of tiie supernatural power of the supernatural Christ can in no sense be recognized among the highest influences, but must be conceded to human weakness, and to the tem- porary predominance of inferior impulses. Kant does indeed find a great ethical truth in the 230 kant's ethics. perversion of human nature, and in the predom- inance and persistence of those lower impulses which inwardly struggle against the law of duty, and make the sense of obligation so potent and so fearful. But he holds this tenet rather as a myth which illus- trates what he conceives to be a subjective ethical truth, than as having any other significance, while the sacred history of redemption from this moral depravity is to him only a mythic parable, made up of the sensuous drapery of those great moral verities which give it its interest and its power. No fact is more notorious, and none more sig- nificant, than that the Kantian Ethics have been a significant and oftentimes a destructive element, whether confessed or unconscious, in the many philo- sophical and historical arguments which have been urged against supernatural Christianity. It may be added that the theory of ethics which does not need a personal Deity to enforce the law of duty, because the law of duty is self-sufficing, or which rejects Him because, forsooth. His efficient authority must address man's sensibility to the personal favor or displeasure of his moral ruler, cannot but labor under a heavy burden of disadvantage when it aspires to a faith in a personal Father in Heaven, or the supernatural Christ, by whom God is manifested to man through SUMMARY OF KAXT^S ETHICAL THEORY. 231 human aftections and human sympathies, in order to lift him to that moral perfection which reveals itself as the ideal of every human soul that finds in the end of its being the law of duty, and in its adjusted and purified sensibilities the realization of that blessedness which is the true spiritual life. CHAPTER V. BRIEF NOTICES FROM EMINENT GERMAN CRITICS. § 116. It does not fall within tbe plan of this essay to trace the fortunes of Kant's eth- introductory, ical theory in Germany, or to exhibit the criticisms which it has received from the several schools in philosophy which in that country have succeeded one another so rapidly during the present century. Each one of these schools has given more or less attention to ethics, but no one of them has given such prominence to ethical relations as has Kant. Certainly no one has sought as he did to make ethical truth the foundation of speculative philosophy. On the other hand, each one of these eminent leaders of philosophical opinion made ethics subservient to his special philosophy, making the pi-actical to sit at the feet of the speculative reason. While ethics has been held in unfeigned honor in all the modern schools, she has never ventured to speak with such positive authority through the categorical impera- tive, or to stand as sponsor for every species of phi- 232 BRIEF NOTICES FROM GKUMAX CRITICS. '-iSS losophical truth as she has done in the school of Kant. It was not without an occasional earnest pi'otest to the contrary that this was done in Kant's own time. We give the impassioned language of Schiller as an example of the response which Kant's extreme onesidedness called forth from one of his earnest admirers, and also as explaining the mis- chievous practical reaction which was occasioned by Kant's dogmatic extremes: § 117. " In Kant's moral philosophy the idea of duty is represented with a harshness Schiller's which frightened away all the gentler comments on p Tx* J • 1 J- -1 i. i. Kant's Ethics. graces ot hie, and might easily tempt a weak understanding to seek for moral perfection in the way of a gloomy and monkish asceticism. However earnestly the great philosopher may have sought to guard himself against such a misrepre- sentation, which to his free and noble spirit must have been most offensive, he has yet given occasion for it by the forcible and striking contrast between the antagonistic principles, which he represents as contending for the mastery of the human will. In respect to the truth of his theory there can be no question among thinking men after the arguments which he has urged, and I scarcely know how one would not sooner give up his manhood than adopt 334 K A NT's ETHICS. any other conclusion than his. And yet, purely as he proceeded to his task as an inquiry for the truth, and satisfactorily as he conducted his argument upon objective grounds, he still appears to me to have been influenced by certain subjective reasons, which, as I think, are easily explained by the cir- cumstances of his times. "The morality of his times as he found it, in both theory and practice, must have outraged him, on the one hand, by the gross sensualism of its practices, and by the unworthy readiness of its philosophers to sanction this corruption by their lax theories. On the other hand, a scarcely less objectionable principle of perfectibility aroused his opposition, which, in order to realize an abstract idea of universal perfection, was by no means sci'upulous in the selection of the means. For these reasons he directed the most cogent of his arguments toward the points where the danger was most imminent and the reform was most needed, and made it at once a solemn obligation to attack sensuality, as well when with brazen front it outraged all moral feeling as when it assumed that imposing garb of high moral aims in which a certain enthusiastic party spirit knew how to array it. For it should be remembered that he had not ignorance to instruct, but perverseness to reprove BRIEF NOTICES FROM GERMAN CRITICS. 235 and reclaim. The cure demanded rebuke, not flat- tery or persuasion, and the more striking was the con- trast which the truth presented to current maxims, the more could he hope to arouse his age to reflec- tion. He became the Draco of his time, because his time was not worthy of a Solon, or capable of receiving him. From the sanctuary of pure reason he brought forth the moral law at once so little known and yet so well known, held it up in its austere sanctity before a degraded generation, and cared not to ask whether it had eyes which could not endure the brightness of its purity. "But in what had the children of the household offended so grievously that Kant cared only for the servants? Because impure inclinations had usurped the name of virtue, must the most disinterested affections in the noblest hearts be brought under suspicion? Because the moral weakling would in- terpret the law of reason with a laxness which makes it a plaything at his convenience, ought it for this reason to be invested with a rigidity so extreme as would only change the vigorous expression of moral freedom into a more honorable form of bond- age? Has not the truly moral man a freer choice between self-esteem and self-contempt than the slave of sense has between pleasure and pain? Is there in 236 rant's ethics. the one case any less constraint for the pure will than in the other for the will that is corrupt? Must humanity itself be indicted and degraded by the imperative form of the moral law, and must the noblest assertion of its greatness become the most abject confession of its weakness? Should not this form of command have precluded the impression that the obligation which man imposes on himself as a rational being, and which for this very reason alone is binding on himself, is reconcilable with his feeling of freedom, and for this reason should it not have avoided the appearance of a foreign and posi- tive command, an appearance which by the radical inclination to act against the same, that is charged upon man, could with difficulty be set aside ? * * * " Human nature is, in fact, a more closel}'^ com- pacted whole than it is permitted to philosophei's to allow it to appear, who seem to be unable to accomplish anything except by the process of dissec- tion. Never again can the reason reject, as un- worthy of itself, those affections which the heart confesses with joy, and which every man cannot but exalt in his own esteem, even when he is himself morally degraded. Were the emotional nature uni- formly the depressed and never the cooperative agency, how could it bring the lire of its own emo- BKIEF NOTICES FEOM GERMAN" CRITICS. 337 tions even to that triumph which is celebrated over itself ■? How could it be so active a participant in the conscious experience of the pure spirit if it were not so intimately interwoven with the same that even the analytical understanding cannot, without violence, sunder the two? The will, moreover, has a more immediate connection with the capacity for emotion than with that for knowledge, and it were often most unfortunate if in every case it must first adjust itself to the pure reason." — Veber Anmuth und Wfirde* We have given these extracts from Schiller because they furnish a vivid and a truthful representation of the impression which Kant's theory made upon an ar- *0f this criticism of Schiller, Julius Miiller pertinently remarks: " It will in any event remain as an example of a memorable error of a noble mind that Kant could maintain that true virtue has nothing to do with sympathizing benevolence toward man, or with the interest of the feelings in man's welfare, and can only manifest itself in its purity when it is attended by no pleasure in the object of our will. And yet these consequences cannot be avoided if the essence of morality is derived only from esteem for the moral law, and for the reason that this law bears the formal characteristic of universal valid- ity. Schiller's treatise, Ueber Anmuth und Wiirde, so far as it protests against this rigor which petrifies the moral life, gives expression to the aspirations of Christian truth; but in so far as it will not give up the general principles of the Kantian moral law it is incapable of holding fast to those truths, or of escaping a conflict with itself. An example of this is furnished in its singular complaint against Kanfs morality, that by the imperative form of the moral law (for the very reason that it is a law asserting authority over freedom) humanity itself is held to be degraded."— /Jie Christ liche Lehre von der SOnde, Ersfes Buck, Erste Abfheilung, Zweifes Kajntel. _ 338 rant's ethics. dent admirer, who was yet an independent critic. While Schiller did not attempt to refute Kant's meta- physical analyses, he was convinced there was some error in his practical conclusions, and indeed in the actual working of his entire ethical theory. The re- volt of his feelings against this theory was shared by a very large proportion of the brilliant writers who followed one another so rapidly, among whom Goethe was as conspicuous for his philosophical insight as for his wondrous imagination. That Kant should have failed to convince this brilliant galaxy of ima- ginative writers, who, while they were overpowered by the acuteness and strength of his logic, and dared not venture to meet him in the arena of metaphysics, were yet confident that his analyses must be either defective or false, goes very far to prove that his ethics, though practically his strong- est point, was in some particulars seriously defec- tive, and especially for its stoical contempt of the sensibilities. That Kant was animated by the noblest purposes in his ethical teachings was freely confessed by those who, like Schiller, were at once his critics and admirers. That the extremest of his one-sided paradoxes may admit of a qualified inter- pretation whicli exalts them into important practical truths may be acknowledged without hesitation by BRIEF NOTICES FKOM GERMAN CRITICS. 239 those who reject them the more positively because they see in them an incongruous alternation of im- aginative flights into the empyrean of inspiring truth and of patient mining along the dark and wind- ing passages of bewildering metaphysics. § 117. The fact has already been adverted to, that, with one or two important excep- schieiennacii- tions, the theory of ethics has attracted ^^ ^^i Lotze. much less attention since the days of Kant, as a part of speculative philosophy, and least of all has it been recognized, as it was by Kant, as furnishing to speculative truth its sole and solid foundation. While each of the great systems, as of J. G. Fichte, Schel- ling, Herbart, and Hegel, has found as ample a place for ethics in terms of reason or thought, as did Kant, no one of these writers like him has made it the cornerstone of our confidence in speculative truth, or invested its dicta with supreme author- ity. To Schleiermacher belongs the distinction of producing an original system, which was derived from or adjusted to the characteristic philosophy or dialectic which was peculiar to himself. This dia- lectic we have no space to describe, nor would it be easy to do so. We speak of his ethics only as dissenting from the ethics of Kant, in that it does not limit its sphere to the imperative of duty as 240 rant's ethics. such, but divides it into three distinct departments, the doctrine of duties, or obligatory acts; of virtues, or of ethical dispositions ; and of habits, or confirmed character. That this classification must rest on a broader psychological and philosophical basis than Kant's practical reason, with its categorical impera- tive and its autonomous will, is too obvious to req.uire any illustration. Both Schleiermacher and Herbart notoriously differ from Kant in their recog- nition of the sensibilities as a prime factor in the ethical experiences and judgments of man. Hermann Lotze is another example of a writer of competent knowledge, profound insight, and im- partial judgment, from whose Microcosmus, B. V., Chap, v., § 3, we give the following, observing that in this connection he also notices one or two con- spicuous features of the later ethical systems: " * * * There is no doubt something to praise in the austerity with which pi'actical philosophy has sought to free moral precepts from an indirect reference to the personal interest of the agent; but this austerity was wrong in seeking to undo the plain and indissoluble connection between the notion of pleasure — despised, and in most of its applica- tions despicable — and the notion of worth in gen- eral. When Kant believed that he had found a BRIEF NOTICES FROM GERMAN CRITICS. 241 universal formula for moral action, in opposition to the aims of self-interest, he was candid enough to admit that he had not discovered in it the precise ground of its binding authority over us. And why, in fact, do we consider it as a matter of course that the maxims of our action must fit into a general sys- tem of law? And which are the maxims which do not thus fit in? Plainly those which, if generally followed, would produce general disorder and the frustration of all effort. But what is this acknowl- edgment of the importance of order, and of the possi- bility of carrying out our intention, if it is not either (1) a grand and comprehensive utilitarian principle taking the place of special and narrower ones, or (2) the confession that maxims different from those demanded would lead to general misery, and are, therefore, to be rejected? Other systems, while eschewing all pleasure, assure us that the moral law is the one important thing; that the relation of a finite being to the absolute, like that of any point of the periphery to its centre, is a relation of subordin- ation; that human will runs parallel to the develop- ment of the infinite idea, and works for it. But how if the absolute should not desire such a relation? If the submission of the periphery caused only vex- ation to the centre, could it be still maintained that 16 242 kant's ethics. this relation was, notwithstanding, to be maintained as unconditionally worthy in itself? " This question should remind us that the sacred- ness of the command depends upon the will of the Supreme Being, upon His capacity of receiving pleasure or pain from our obedience or disobedience, and upon that relation of ourselves to Him, in virtue of which we find our own blessedness in His pleasure. If we eliminate from our conception of the Supreme Being every trace of feeling, and transform our conception into that of inflexible physical force, a power which, though intelligent, is devoid of feeling, we see at once that the subordination above referred to is altogether without worth. * * * " What is the meaning of saying that there may be certain relations between diiferent wills, which merit unconditional approbation? Is such a relation to be found anywhere in the world? Are there any- where wills which, apart from all feeling, actually exist, and can enter into relation with one another? And if it were so — if the world consisted of beings that were m.erely intellectual and volitional, and of which none, whether finite or infinite, could anyhow or at any time be capable of feeling pain or pleasure, in such a case what could be the significance of those ideals of action which then would have no one BftlEP NOTICES FROM GERMAN CRITICS. 243 Ity whom they could be approved? As a matter of fact, would it be an absolute moral requirement that one existing condition, which caused neither pain nor pleasure to anyone, should be replaced by another condition which would likewise produce no increase of well-being to anyone in the world? Must we believe that the universe is so taken up with cere- mony that it is concerned with nothing but the real- ization of formal conditions? The too stern morality to which we have referred may easily conceal from itself these final results, the transformation of all moral action into, as it were, a mere mechanical putting together; for certainly no one is likely to set up individual moral laws in which there does not lurk some hidden reference to the pleasure which is so much despised; in other departments of life these extreme consequences do occasionally appear." § 118. One of the most significant criticisms of Kant's theory from a philosopher of a Trendeien- modern German school has been fur- (^"/ig^jj^es nished by the late eminent Adolf Tren- »" Kant. delenburg, of Berlin. It may be found in bis His- torische Beitrtige zur Philosophic, Dritter Band, Bei*- lin, 1867. The title of the essay is, Der Widerstreit zwischen Kant und Aristoteles in der Ethik. 244 Kant's ethics. The first point which the author makes is, that while Kant urges acute objections against those philosophers who would derive the principles of ethics from an anal3'sis of human nature, he alto- gether omits the peculiar form in which this analy- sis is applied by Aristotle. Whereas Aristotle has recognized the inner purpose or end which controls and explains the constitution of man and the activi- ties to which it is destined as its highest and best use, Kant only conceives of this as some external result or achievement, activity, or skill, to which it may be trained. Trendelenburg notices in passing that in order to discover this supreme aim or pur- pose of man's being or constitution, Aristotle would have us resort to psychology, which Kant would reject as involving the study of matter as distin- guished from form, the accidental rather than the essential, and therefore as unscientific. Next, Kant insists that all material practical principles must carry us over to the doctrine of self-love or separate, i.e., individual, happiness. This general assertion is met by Trendelenburg with the general denial, that to found our principle in the mat- ter or constitution of man does not necessarily involve the founding it in separate happiness or the so-called principle of self-love. It is the necessary relation BRIEF NOTICES FROM GEK.MAX CRITICS. 245 of a morally good or right action to the realization of the end of our being which enables us to exalt this ideal into a principle which becomes controlling and supreme. That its relations to the highest happiness may be the medium by which we discern the activity for which we are destined he concedes, but that happiness is properl}' the end, he denies, but would say the action indicated by the relative hap- piness which it gives is such an end and becomes a law. In brief, he dissents from Kant in his inter- pretation of Aristotle, as to his estimate of the psychological study of man's nature as the ground of an ethical system, as to his judgment of the rela- tion of the formal to the real, and as to his recogni- tion of purpose and design as essential to the inter- pretation of the nature of man, and of man's highest or true happiness as the indication of the highest and best activity, and as, consequently, the revealer and enforcer of the moral law. These principles are more distinctly and fully developed in the second part of the essay, from which we give the following: Fii'st of all, the author notices that, inasmuch as pleasure {die Lust), being the spring of the indi- vidual life, tends to selfishness, while the good, the bond of the common life, seeks the general well- ;i46 kant's ethics. being, subordinating to it the individual interest, the mutual relation of the two necessarily becomes of the utmost ethical importance. After sundry historical and critical notices, he adds that pleasure, ever varied and changeable, can- not for this reason be a guide in action and in life. Neither the highest scale of mere enjoyment, as such, nor any separate good, can serve as a guide or impulse to the general good. Consequently the good will must renounce all separate or selfish good as its end or rule. But it does not follow from this that the good will has no pleasure. Rather, over against selfish good is set its esteem for the law, as that which opposes selfish good, its pleasure being intellectual in its occasion. Moreover, this esteem for the law being general, and not individual in its occasion, is not a transient feeling, but permanent in its expe- rience, a disposition which cannot be content with single actions, but is a permanent state of the will. It also involves a superior object of love; for the disposition and will are not cold abstractions, but living activities, which are fixed on commanding objects of good. In such a condition of the soul, impulse and end, a good will and good actions, cor- respond; pure pleasure in the good becomes the constant characteristic of the good disposition. BRIEF NOTICES FROM GERMAN CRITICS. 247 The crood man delicrhts in the law of God after the n o inward man. In the good disposition character con- sists; and if character is energetic, it will have pleasure in its principle. It follows from this analysis that pleasure is at once repelled and embraced; repelled as a ground, and yet retained as a characteristic of virtue. We cannot reconcile the difficulty by making, the good man selfish in his virtiious joys. We rather resort to the organic conception of nature and man, after which one result or aim serves an end or aim still higher than itself, and so on, the highest of all giving law to all which is below. In the highest of all we find the categorical shall, which at last is found to proceed from a will, i.e., if one follows on from the conditioned to the unconditioned, and at last encounters a person. Here we meet the highest for man in the universe of thought and will — the man asserting I ought, the man responding I icill. When we come back to the relations of pleasure or happiness to these experiences, and ask for the place which it holds, we find that it is a generic term, and covers or includes a great variety of very iinlike experiences, so unlike as to accept or endure with difficulty any common appellation, yet all hav- ing in common, a tendency to some special activity, 248 kant's ethics. which tends in some way to the development or upholding of man. In the two forms of pleasure and pain are indicated the furtherance or hindrance of the individual life. So far as pleasure and pain look beyond, to their respective ends, these expe- riences are secondary and the accomplishment of the end is primary. In animals they are limited to the individual well-being. But in ethics and with man we go farther; we widen our conceptions so as to include the common life. Personality and the state are recognized, also the higher pleasures of art and science and the divine in man. The moral training of the will consists in learning to find pleasure and pain in those activities and objects which are befitting. Let no man think that such a discipline can be achieved by the exclusion of pleasure. The springs of action are wanting to the will if the man does not embark in it his inmost life, and does not find his pleasures from moral living; not that he should be active for the sake of pleasure, but should embark his inmost self, without ceasing, in the good. " These extracts from writers who are no longer living will be sufficient for our purpose. The num- ber of able critics in Germany who continue to BKIEF KOTICES FUOM GERMAN CRITICS. 'HO discuss Kant's ethical theory seems likely to increase rather than to be diminished. The fascination which brings each new generation to his feet to listen to his teachings — either to accept or reject them — seems of late to be intensified rather than to be weakened. In one way or other, Kant seems likely to continue to stimulate and to instruct the ablest thinkers of the present day. The author of this critical examination of his ethical system yields to no one in his estimate of Kant's superior genius and his quickening power. At the same time he is profoundly of the opinion that the critical philoso- phy, in order to exert its best influence, needs to be thoroughly interpreted, and critically discerned. i .. . i f /■^ciCJiF^ .-kjiiC' **A^^ ^=gk^\; '' UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A A 001 415 168 2 JfTj/MAC,