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THE FORMAL AND MATERIAL ELEMENTS 
 OF KANT'S ETHICS 
 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY CONTRIBUTIONS 
 
 TO 
 
 PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 
 
 Vol. Ill No. t 
 
 THE FORMAL AND MATERIAL ELEMENTS 
 
 DP 
 
 KANT'S ETHICS 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM MORROW WASHINGTON, Pli.I). 
 
 Sometime Scholar in Philosophy in Columbia University 
 
 June, 1898 
 
 The Macmillan Co., 66 Fifth Avenue, New York 
 Mayer and Muller, Mark&rafenstrasse, Berlin 
 
 Price 60 cents 
 
£8 1 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 1 
 Introductory 7 
 
 II 
 
 The Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals . . 14 
 
 III 
 The Critique of Pure Practical Reason 29 
 
 IV 
 The Metaphysic of Ethics 63 
 
 V 
 
 Conclusion (with Scheme) 66 
 
 86479 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE primal fact that strikes one in Kant's Ethics, leaving 
 out of view the fact that they are a necessary part of his 
 complete method, is that pe is thoroughly animated by they 
 spirit of Stoicism ; knd that further, in this spirit, he is aim- 
 ing more particularly at a refutation of the contemporary 
 sensationalistic schools. In accomplishing the double ob- 
 ject called forth by these two facts, and in fitting his doc- 
 trines into the terminology of the critical method, he had 
 the misfortune to express himself in terms peculiar to Logic ; 
 thereby provoking a merely logical refutation, and one, on 
 that account, often wide of the mark and quite blind to the 
 ethical truth conveyed. 
 
 The terminology thus adopted was that by which the 
 elements of a science are classed under one of the two heads 
 of Form or Matter. This division served Kant doubly 
 thus : it allowed him to distinguish as the Greeks had done, 
 between Reason, Will and Spirit on the one hand, and 
 Sense, Impulse, Matter and Body on the other; at the same 
 time by advocating an ethics of " form, "(he showed that he 
 regarded the moral law as a product of Reasomin contrast 
 to the Moral Sense foundation of the English scnool. For, 
 he thought, Ethics must proceed from reason; and to be ^ 
 Ethics, must give a law, the a priori product of pure reason ; / 
 and which, therefore, can be only the mere concept ox form 
 of a law. On the other hand, a doctrine which ignores the 
 mandatory character of virtue fills up the gap thus left by 
 descriptions of virtue's pleasantness ; in which case, all that is 
 71 7 
 
8 THE FORMAL AND MATERIAL [g 
 
 accomplished is to make the objects of the will (the matter) 
 pleasant, and their attainment desired ; therefore we must 
 rule out absolutely from Ethics the matter of desire. 
 
 In Kant's use of the word, there is but one^ derivation for 
 the matter of desire ; it is the sense-given, hence is par- 
 ticular, empirical and merely contingent. For " Form," on 
 the other hand, we may find two sources, Reason and the 
 Understanding, used to denote respectively the faculty 
 which deals with Ideas notjbased on intuition, but produced 
 from its own spontaneity, and that which has no conceptions 
 except those derived from sensible intuition. 
 
 When he reached the period of his_ejhi£ajjwntin^;s, Kant 
 had finished his investigation of the limits of the Understand- 
 ing, and Reason became of first importance as a field of re- 
 search. As a result, the Understanding falls into the back- 
 ground, and occupies a somewhat equivocal position. As a 
 faculty of abstraction, itf belongs to the formal world and is 
 concerned with the form of knowledge.) As opposed to the 
 intelligible intuitionless world in which Reason dwells by its 
 purely spontaneous nature, Understanding ranks with the 
 sensible world of intuitions. (The division of intelligible and 
 sensible worlds is the one most prominently before Kant's 
 mind in his Ethics.)/ Nevertheless his phraseology is not so 
 constant as not to allow of a frequent use of the division be- 
 tween Sensibility and Understanding. Form thus comes to 
 have two distinct references. It may be (i) merely the 
 universal to be arrived at by abstraction from the particulars 
 given in intuition; (2) the rational, as distinct from the 
 sensible and intelligible, and not derived from intuition. 
 In the former sense, Kant is a conceptualist; though there 
 is an intimation, in his conception of the Categories, that if 
 the universal does not lie in the mind before the particular is 
 presented in intuition, at least the mind is ready beforehand 
 for such presentation. 
 
gl ELEMENTS OF KANT'S ETHICS g 
 
 (in his Ethics, Kant is carried clear into the camp of Real- 
 ism : the universal, as a law, exists apart from the particular 
 and can never be found in the particular. But it exists so 
 only in our conception of a rational being. J 
 
 This last qualification denotes the psychological aspect ot 
 Kant's attitude, and is really the solution of the whole ques- 
 tion as to his position on this point, into which his distinc- 
 tion between Form and Matter compels us to inquire. For 
 while Kant uses this division as thoroughly as any scholastic 
 could desire, he never takes the scholastic's ontological point 
 of view. It is not to decide priority or reality of existence 
 that leads him to make this abstraction, but the necessity of 
 denoting the different psychological sources of ideas, of their 
 causes, and of concepts. Where or how the moral law ex- 
 ists, Kant did not care to inquire. That/it existed, prior to 
 all experience in the conception of the v very nature of a 
 rational being, was enough. So far it had reality as cer- 
 tainly as did the Ideas of Plato. Without being at all con- 
 cerned, therefore, in the ontological quarrel of Nominalism 
 and Realism, Kant's Ethics denote a strongly^realistic stand- 
 point. 
 
 The difference between Matter and Form, in Kant's con- 
 ception of them, is the same as in Aristotle's ; but he never 
 uses the terms in the Aristotelian sense. Instead of form 
 and matter being coeternal principles of things, they are now 
 elements of knowledge. Form is that element supplied by 
 Understanding and Reason ; matter is that given through 
 the senses. The sense-given can never be anything but the 
 particular, contingent and a posteriori. The necessary and 
 universal, from its very nature, must be the product of the 
 reason, of the pure reason a priori. 
 
 That place where Kant comes nearest to the scholastic 
 meaning of the terms is in his distinction between formal and 
 material knowledge and in the division of the sciences on this 
 
I0 THE FORMAL AND MATERIAL |^ I0 
 
 basis. This is at the very beginning of his work ; all the 
 conceptions are present that appear at any time, but Kant is 
 here insisting on the a priori character of the one, the empir- 
 ical, of the other sort of knowledge. Accordingly that idea 
 is not so strongly brought out, which advancingly distin- 
 guishes his use of the terms from the traditional one. This 
 is the conception that matter and form are not eternal prin- 
 ciples of the same thing. There is, on the contrary, nothing 
 in Kant to prevent the supposition that they may exist apart, 
 though, indeed, form without matter would be empty, and 
 matter without form would have no meaning for us. Aris- 
 totle's form and matter do not exclude each other : form is 
 matter in a higher stage of development; matter is form in 
 a lower stage. In Kant's conception they are fixed ;. form 
 is, as it were, the mental mold through which matter passes 
 in its cognition by the mind. Form is the determination ; 
 matter, that which is determined. 
 
 We have, therefore, two different conceptions of form, the 
 traditional and the Kantian. The difference may be illus- 
 trated thus : in the scholastic meaning, the form of a sentence 
 is that determination of words which is essential to their 
 becoming a sentence, i. e. y there must be a subject, a predi- 
 cate verb, and if the verb be transitive, an object, and so on. 
 The matter of such a sentence is the specific subject, predi- 
 cate verb and object. In Kant's use, the matter is both this 
 form and matter, if these together form part of a cognition. 
 The form is that in the conceiving mind whereby they are 
 cognized ; it is that by which mind legislates for nature. 
 
 Thus, /the Categorical Imperative is the form of the law. ) In 
 the former sense, it is comparable to the formal syllogism. 
 That is, fit is not the law, but the form in which all maxims 
 on which one acts must be molded in order that their con- 
 sistency may be tested :1 just as all reasoning must be sub- 
 mitted to the formal syllogism in order to test its validity. 
 
! j ] ELEMENTS OF KANT'S ETHICS \ i 
 
 •Jin the second, or Kantian use, the form of the law is a law: 
 a law because it expresses moral necessity) and, being 
 necessary, proceeds a priori from reason alone ; the form 
 of a law because it is given by pure reason, and is, therefore, 
 merely the idea of a law in general. 
 
 In Kant's own use we may distinguish two sorts of form ; 
 the first is the category, whose correlative matter are the 
 objects of sensible intuition. Form and matter in this sense 
 are the subject-matter of physics, regarded as the science of 
 the whole realm of nature and speculations thereon. Besides 
 the category as a form of judgment, the mind also deals in 
 Ideas for which no sensible intuition can possibly be found. 
 On this account Reason in its speculative use, i. e. the 
 Understanding, rejects them as elements of knowledge at all; 
 they are " conceptions without perceptions," and conse- 
 quently empty. Reason as deliberative Will, on the other 
 hand, settles the account of such Ideas very differently by 
 making them the foundation stones of rational morality. 
 The understanding can deal only with the materials pro- 
 vided it by the sensibility. Rational Will, on the contrary, 
 produces its Ideas from its own spontaneity. It is therefore 
 absurd to attempt to find, corresponding to these forms, a 
 matter in the meaning previously given the term, namely, 
 the sense-given. We must find a new and broader definition 
 for matter. 
 
 It is the very nature of the Ideal Conceptions of the reason 
 to be realized. " In order to extend a pure cognition prac- 
 tically, there must be an a priori purpose given, that is, an 
 end as object of the will." ■ That is, we may call this pur- 
 posed end the matter of an Ideal. We see, therefore, that 
 both understanding and reason have an object (matter); 
 but that of the former is Gegenstand, the given in intuition, 
 that of the latter is Zweck, " an object possible of realization 
 through Freedom" (spontaneity). From this point of view 
 
I2 THE FORMAL AND MATERIAL [ I2 
 
 the department of thought under which the Ideas fall is that 
 of purpose, of ends to be attained ; which is Ethics. ( Under 
 Ethics, consequently, is understood all that does not come 
 within the domain of nature (physics), where purpose is 
 not possible, j Of the nature of the Ideal as the subject- 
 matter proper of Ethics, we shall learn more in the consid- 
 eration of the chapter on H the Object of pure practical 
 Reason," and in the Dialectic. 
 
 The length to which Kant carried the abstraction of the a 
 priori and empirical elements of knowledge, and in ethics 
 especially, his passion to get a binding universal, abstracted 
 altogether from time-given circumstances, forced him into a 
 position continually more marked by realism. His hatred of 
 the sense-given increased correspondingly. So that " mater- 
 ialistic" has for him all the meaning attached in common 
 parlance to that term as opposed to intellectual or spiritual. 
 It represents all that is base and sensualistic in principles. 
 This sense is not brought out in a well defined way, but is 
 seen most clearly in such affirmations as : " all material 
 practical principles as such are of one and the same kind, 
 and come under the general principle of self-love or private 
 happiness; " 2 "the direct opposite of the principle of moral- 
 ity (obtains), when the principle of private happiness is made 
 the determining principle of the will." 3 This bias led Kant 
 to limit almost altogether the word matter to the sense- 
 given, although it includes any object, whether of thought or 
 sense. 
 
 ( Formal Ethics is the product of pure practical reason a 
 priori. )To find the elements of it we must analyze the term 
 "morality;" to establish its reality and authority we must 
 proceed synthetically. The latter task is the Critique's. 
 The former is that of the Grundlegung; 4 which is accord- 
 ingly an analysis of the formal presuppositions which must 
 necessarily be found in morality if it is to have reality, i. e., 
 
j 3 ] ELEMENTS OF KANT 'S E THICS 1 3 
 
 is to be regarded as the science of Law and Duty. To this 
 analysis we will now proceed. 
 
 1 Abbott's Kant, 4th ed., p. 231. 
 8 Abbott, p. 108. 
 
 • Ibid., p. 124; Kirchman, K. d. prac. Ver., S. 41. 
 
 * I have throughout chosen to call the " Fundamental Principles of the Meta- 
 physic of Morals " by the first word of the German title. 
 
II 
 
 THE GRUNDLEGUNG : FORMAL PRESUPPOSITIONS OF 
 MORALITY 
 
 WE are immediately introduced to the formal and material 
 as elements of knowledge by the statement that it was on 
 them as a basic principle that Greek philosophy divided 
 knowledge into the three departments of Physics, Ethics and 
 Logic. The definitions here given show that Kant already 
 intends to support the conclusions later reached in the 
 Critique of Practical Reason, and foreshadowed in that of the 
 Pure Reason ; namely, that Physics is the science of 
 Natures Ethics of the supersensible (corresponding to Greek 
 " Metapnysics ") ; that the latter can establish those Ideas 
 of reason to which Metaphysics had failed to give reality) 
 Logic is the underlying science which prescribes how one 
 must think in the other two ; i. e. it supplies the form. 
 While thus identifying his use of formal and material 
 with the Greek, Kant from the beginning uses the terms in 
 his own fashion by adding the psychological element which 
 had been absent from the former meaning. For logic is 
 now not only the philosophy of forms, but of forms of the 
 understanding and of reason: besides being empty, it must 
 come a priori from pure reason. Otherwise it would not be, 
 as it is, valid for all thought and capable of demonstration. 
 
 When such a pure philosophy is applied to definite 
 objects of the understanding, as found in Ethics and Physics, 
 it is called Metaphysic. Metaphysic is thus material be- 
 cause applied to a specific object ; but is also formal, inas- 
 14 [14 
 
 
I 5 ] ELEMENTS CF KANT'S E TIIICS f 5 
 
 much as it is not empirical, and is a systematization of the 
 rational parts of physics and ethics. Tabulating Kant's 
 statements, we have the following division of sciences as re- 
 gards their form and matter : 
 
 Philosophy 
 
 
 Pure 
 
 _ . — . ^ 
 
 Empirical 
 
 Formal 
 (Logic) 
 
 Material 
 (Metaphysic) 
 
 Anthropology Experimental 
 (Material Ethics) Physics 
 
 
 of Ethics of Physics 
 
 
 Rechtslehre Tugendlehre 
 (formal) ' (material) 
 
 
 It is seen that in Kant's opinion there are two metaphysics, 
 those of etjiics and phvj>ics ; and in each of the sciences 
 there can be but one metaphysic. The division of Ethics 
 into Rechtslehre and Tugendlehre (formal and material) is 
 made in the Metaphysic of Ethics, and we have no concern 
 with it at present. 
 
 The intent of this subdividing is to bring out Kant's con- 
 ception that/in formal (pure) ethics only can a law, neces- 
 sary and universal, be found. \ Any principle that needs time- 
 given conditions to develop and establish it, and cannot, 
 therefore, be justified a priori ', is material and not able to 
 furnish a necessary law. . 
 
 /Of the metaphysic of Ethics,, the subject-matter is the Will ;j 
 rtbt the will generally, as treated in psychology, but a pos- 
 sible, pure will. And the purpose of the metaphysic is the 
 finding of the supreme canon of morality, a necessary and 
 universal law, the ground of whose a priority in a more ex- \ 
 plicitly ethical sense is its necessity to moral experience. 
 
 The method adopted by Kant to attain his end is to find 
 by analysis all that is contained, presupposed that is, in the 
 
1 6 THE FORMAL AND MA TERIAL [ t g 
 
 v term rational morality. This analysis will furnish the foun- 
 dation of a metaphysic of morals. The concepts found to 
 inhere in "morality" will be such as are necessarily deter- 
 mined before there can be any morality ; i. e. y the formal 
 conditions of morality. To find these conditions is the task 
 of the " Grundlegung." The subsequent proof of the real 
 existence of morality will be the work of the Critique. 
 / The first condition of morality, that which conditions all 
 others, is the Good Will. 1 The Good Will is absolute good.) 
 As such, it is formal; that is, a possible will which sets forth 
 what the actual will ought to be, and thus determines the 
 formal conditions of a will's becoming good. Not to violate 
 the requirements of formal morality ,(it must be a will which 
 gives only universal laws,, being indeterminate as regards 
 specific objects and containing the mere form of volition. 2 
 By " absolute " Kant means the unconditioned, of which 
 he gives two definitions : 3 (i) the supreme unconditioned 
 condition which is the condition of all others and is not sub- 
 ordinate to any; (2) that whole which is not a part of a 
 greater whole of the same kind (the unrelated). He applies 
 the former definition to the Good Will: it is the supreme 
 good and the condition of every other (without which they 
 , could not exist), but is not the sole and complete good. 4 
 \ "A good will is good not because of what it performs, but 
 simply by virtue of the volition, that is, it is good in itself. y 5 
 Not that it is unrelated, but that its goodness is not in the 
 least affected by its relation to anything else ; and that the 
 fact that it attains material good is not what makes its voli- 
 tion good. The will can become formal good only through 
 a formal reason (that is, one abstracted from ends), namely, 
 the fact that is the unconditioned condition of all other prin- 
 ciples of pure morality. 6 
 
 In opposition to this formal good men have tried to up- 
 hold a material good based on the empirical principle of 
 
I j ] ELEMENTS OF KAN T'S E THICS j 7 
 
 Happiness. Their position is refuted by the fact of the 
 existence of reason and its office, which is not the attain- 
 ment and preservation of happiness. The Will is not at first 
 defined further than to distinguish it from wish; 7 and to 
 affirm that it acts according to concepts or principles, and 
 is consequently a deliberative will or practical reason. 8 In 
 the Metaphysic of Ethics a distinction is made between 
 rational and elective will. The elective will is of two kinds, 
 human which is merely affected by sensible desire, and 
 animal which is altogether determined by such. 9 "Will" at 
 first has a narrower meaning, being denied to all but rational 
 beings ; and being indeed the faculty of acting according to 
 principles. Later, the Rational Will alone is the practical 
 reason, and gives laws: elective will gives maxims. Elec- 
 tive will alone is free ; /rational will is neither free nor unfreey 
 Animals have no free-will, being determined by physical 
 impulses. Rational will through its laws, which become 
 subjectively the maxims of the elective will, controls the 
 latter ; or would do so were it not weakened by disuse and 
 submission to the inclinations. 
 
 Proceeding from the conception of the Good Will as the 
 first presupposition of morality, Kant takes up the notion of. 
 Duty. fThe idea of Duty involves that of a will 3° unless 
 there be a cause able to choose its own ends there can be no 
 responsibility for results. (An act to be moral must be done 
 from a sense of duty,^not from inclination ; and such an act 
 derives its moral worth not from the matter, the end in view, 
 but altogether from the principle on which one acts. Duty 
 is opposed to inclination, and has no pleasantness connected 
 with it ; reluctance to accept the obligation being one of its 
 essentials. 11 Kant asserts that consciousness of his moral 
 worth, 1, tf.Ythat he can act on principles in obedience to 
 Duty, is man's highest good ; j but affirms also that one can- 
 not be certain of this worth, since he cannot tell whether he 
 
1 8 THE FORMAL AND MATERIAL [jg 
 
 is acting from Duty alone; "we cannot observe the maxims 
 themselves, not even always in ourselves." n 
 
 Duty is defined in terms of Law, which is the next step in 
 the analysis. For Duty is but a species of the wider term 
 
 tLaw; a law that applies only to free rational beings. 
 Duty is the necessity of acting from respect for the law."/ 4 
 This duty is a conception of formal morality ; it is not de- 
 rived from experience, and without it no moral experience 
 is possible. That it is a conception, and one a priori, in- 
 volves a contradiction of the English School, which had made 
 it a sense. Later, in the Metaphysic of Ethics, Kant dis- 
 tinguishes further between formal and material Duty. The 
 former is obligation, " the necessity of a free action under 
 a categorical imperative of reason." 15 Material duty " is the 
 action to which a person is bound. It is therefore the mat- 
 ter of obligation." 16 
 
 The notion of Law is implied in that of Duty, as the latter 
 follows on the conception of the Good Will. " The notion 
 of duty stands in immediate relation to a law," 17 and " is in 
 itself already the notion of a constraint of the free elective 
 will by the law." 18 (For Kant, Ethics is the science of Law ; 
 of a law expressing itself concretely in the single word, 
 Duty.\ That is the form every law must take in order to 
 have its weight as a moral law. It is a priori, one being not 
 even a moral being till he has experienced it. {To be moral, 
 one must have a sense of duty to start wit/h is his dictum. 
 
 /" A law (a moral practical law) is a proposition, which 
 contains a categorical imperative (a command). "\ Such 
 a proposition is objective and universal — a principle for all 
 rational nature. There are also subjective principles, called 
 <maxims. They are the principles the individual chooses for 
 himselft If his choice of a principle is in accord with uni- 
 versal law, the maxim becomes an objective law subjectively 
 practical, and the resulting act is legal, fro be moral it 
 
j p] ELEMENTS OF KANT '5 E THICS j g 
 
 must be done for the sake of the law as well as in conformity 
 to it.) A maxim based on desire is material, incapable of 
 universality, and immoral. Accordingly, we have the com- 
 mand:^" Act on a maxim which can also hold good as a 
 universal law. Every maxim which is not capable of being 
 so is contrary to morality." ^J If the law is to be a priori, 
 it must be separated from everything empirical and material. 
 "A practical precept which contains a material (and there- 
 fore empirical) condition must never be reckoned a practical 
 law." 21 Kant rather gives the impression that a maxim is due 
 to the prompting of inclination and wants. This results from 
 his desire to emphasize the fact that such a maxim cannot 
 be a law. On the contrary, however, the law itself is a 
 maxim, inasmuch as it cannot become specific except through 
 the use by the will of a maxim. But a maxim cannot be a 
 law, and the will is immoral, if sensible desire is the motive. 
 The only way that a m axim (as principle) can become a 
 formal law is that it have no other other source in the will 
 than a sense of duty ; any other motive would not come 
 from reason, but from a desire for an object of the senses, 
 and hence would not be conceptual or formal. 
 
 The peculiarity of the view we take of the law is that we 
 respect it. Respect is a feeling ; but it is not a species of 
 sensible desire. It depends on the conception of the law, 
 merely as to its form, not on account of any object, as do 
 all other feelings. It is therefore formal, and necessary to 
 morality. " Respect is a tribute which we cannot refuse to 
 merit, whether we will or not." 22 
 
 (The moral law is a formal determining principle of action 
 by pure practical reason^ At the same time, it is a material 
 objective determining principle of the objects of actions as 
 called good and evil ; it is also a subjective determining 
 principle, that is, a motive. 23 That is to say, it determines 
 formally whether the will is good or evil ; materially, whether 
 
20 THE FORMAL AND MATERIAL [ 2 o 
 
 the end is good or not; and is also a motive to the fulfill- 
 ment of the law. The formijla of the law is repeated many 
 times, and in various forms according to the point under 
 consideration. As we shall see, they reduce themselves to 
 three. The first and fundamental statement of it is : &ct so 
 that the maxim of your will may be by your will a universal 
 law. This is in Kant's view the only valid principle of a 
 law which is to be merely the idea of a law in general ;) 
 and is on that account pure and formal, not admitting any 
 empirical (sensible) motive and not having an end in view. 
 For it " does not concern the matter of the action or its 
 intended result, but its form and the principle of which it is 
 itself a result." 24 
 
 There is an end in view, the attainment and preservation 
 of universal law. But this is a logical not an ethical end, 
 i. e. y it is a test of truth, not a state of being to be arrived at. 
 If it were ethical, Kant would be involved in the inconsistency 
 of making social morality (for that is the seemingly implied 
 purpose of the law) of chief importance in his system. At 
 first sight, it seems intended the law shall operate by devel- 
 oping in the individual a large sense of responsibility, and 
 then throwing on him, as it were, the legislation of the uni- 
 verse. But in its strictest interpretation, the law is more 
 formal than that, and demands only logical consistency : a 
 will always impelled by reason alone, and conduct not vary- 
 ing to suit the behest of contingent desires. 
 
 The law as stated above is called technically the Categori- 
 cal Imperative. Besides it there are hypothetical imperatives. 
 These, of whatever kind, are material, because looking to 
 a specific end, and hence have no place in pure morality. 
 All the Imperatives are summarized in three classes ; two 
 which are material, the technical and the pragmatic or pru- 
 dential, and the moral, which alone is formal. 
 
 The question now arises, How are these imperatives pos- 
 
2 1 ] ELEMENTS OF KANT'S ETHICS 2 1 
 
 sible? How can we conceive of this obligation of the will 
 which is in the notion of an imperative ? !^~- As to the tech- 
 nical imperative, the question is easy of answer : no obliga- 
 tion is put upon the will unless it is desired to attain a certain 
 object. / In the end, therefore, lies all the force of the com- 
 mand, and the imperative is conditional upon the desire for 
 that end.) With the prudential imperative, whose end is 
 happiness', the case is different. The technical imperative is 
 an analytic proposition ; the prudential is synthetic and in- 
 definite, as is the moral. To distinguish it from the latter, 
 therefore, Kant forthwith denies that it is an imperative at 
 all : 26 the precepts of happiness are necessary but not moral, 
 i. e. y there is no universal law with which they can be a 
 priori conformed, as is the case with moral maxims. 
 
 When we come to consider the possibility of moral imper- 
 atives, the matter is again different. These are necessary, 
 they unconditionally oblige the will. It is not possible, how- 
 ever, to show this necessity by examples from experience, 
 inasmuch as prudence may always be supposed in such cases 
 to have been the motive, instead of Duty. We have, there- 
 fore, to investigate a priori the possibility of the categorical 
 imperative. 
 
 First, we inquire " whether the mere conception of a cate- 
 gorical imperative may not perhaps supply us also with the 
 formula of it," 27 leaving the problem of its possibility till later. 
 The content of a hypothetical imperative is given accord- 
 ing to the conditional circumstances. That of a categorical 
 is in its very conception; it is (i ) the law, (2) the necessity 
 that the maxims of the will shall conform to the law. That 
 is, an unconditional imperative will contain the command 
 that man shall do his Duty, and, in the second place, one 
 can learn from its formula what his duty is, namely, that he 
 will according to a universal law. In Kant's opinion, there- 
 fore, that which he had started out to seek, namely, the 
 
22 THE FORMAL AND MATERIAL T 2 2 
 
 conception of " the obligation of the will which the imperative 
 expresses," is morally an unconditional necessity. And moral 
 necessity consists in this, thatfone must will as though willing 
 universally.^ 
 
 It is to be remembered that [from the merely logical point 
 of view the categorical imperative in conformity with its 
 formal and empty character is not a law, but the principle 
 on which one acts morally] the form which a maxim must 
 take in order to be a law: just (as before stated) as the for- 
 mal syllogism is the mode in which all reasoning can be pre- 
 sented, and must be, if its validity is to be tested; so every 
 maxim on which one acts (not every action) must be able 
 to take this universal form in order to be formally moral. 
 But such morality would be only formal ; it would not be 
 material, any more than a formally valid syllogism is a test of 
 material truth. Or to take an analogy from grammar, any 
 sentence correct or incorrect, so it be a sentence, can be put 
 into a diagram (universalized) ; but when it has been dia- 
 grammed you have merely determined whether it is a sen- 
 tence or not. If it it is grammatically incorrect to start with, 
 it remains so without regard to the universal form. The 
 fact is so plain as to lead one to think that Kant must have 
 meant something else by his appeal to the form of the law. 
 Kant avoids the difficulty thus made apparent by denying 
 that there is such a thing as material morality. To take 
 circumstances, results and what-not into consideration is to 
 destroy the proper function of Ethics. If, we ask, the good- 
 ness of the will is not to be learned from its results, the tree 
 is not to be known by its fruits, what test can be furnished? 
 (An immoral maxim, he replies, will contradict itself; con- 
 sistency is the test of goodness.) One may still object, how- 
 ever, that to learn that an evil maxim is self-destructive, 
 whether general or particular, one must go outside the form. 
 This is to interpret Kant in the narrowest sense, accord- 
 
23] ELEMENTS OF KANT'S ETHICS 2 $ 
 
 ing to his own analogy from logic ; there is, however, an 
 ethical truth in his doctrine which we hope to discover 
 further on ; consideration of it is postponed out of regard for 
 the fact that Kant probably became aware of it only as he 
 gradually realized the weakness of his more formal doctrine. 
 This point is certain, that in Kant's opinion the goodness of 
 the will consists in its consistency with something or other ; 
 just at present it is the consistency of its maxims with uni- 
 versal law : this constitutes moral necessity. 
 
 The question then naturally arises, Is this our notion of 
 the content of obligation, that a rational being must always 
 will according to universal law? ("Is it a necessary law 
 for all rational beings that they should always judge of 
 their actions by maxims of which they can themselves 
 will that they should serve as universal laws?" 2 } Two 
 interpretations, never distinguished by Kant, can oe given 
 to this question. For him/duty is the moral law, in con- 
 creto\ Now the fundamental idea of a law is that it shall 
 always command the same thing. But command different 
 things- is precisely what duty d6es do ; and what it never 
 entered Kant's head to allow that it does. If, therefore, we 
 put the above question in the form, Does the conception of 
 a rational being involve that he should always act as the 
 sense of duty directs? we may answer in the affirmative, 
 universally, without binding ourselves always to will the same 
 thing. From his failure to see, or to allow, the distinction 
 just pointed out between law and duty, Kant bound himself 
 to a conception of goodness at which common sense revolts, 
 namely, that unchanging consistency is the only fit realiza- 
 tion of human dignity. 30 
 
 If, however, it is a law for all rational beings that they 
 should always will universally, and this is our notion of obli- 
 gation, then "it must be connected (altogether a priori) 
 with the very conception of the will of a rational being." 31 
 
24 THE FORMAL AND MATERIAL [24 
 
 In short, if there be such a categorical imperative and such 
 responsibility on human shoulders, there must be a free will. 
 And an analysis of our conception of a rational being will 
 show that we view his will as, by its nature, a universal 
 legislator. 
 
 "The will is conceived as a faculty of determining oneself 
 to action in accordance with the conception of certain 
 laws." The notion of it implies also an objective ground of 
 the determination ; that is, there must be an end to a volition. 
 If the law is to be universal, the end must also be able to 
 serve as an object for all rational beings without exception ; 
 in other words, it must be formal, a priori, abstracted from 
 all things contingently desirable to the individual. Such an 
 end can be only " something whose existence has in itself an 
 absolute worth." 33 This absolute goodness, Kant finds, exists 
 " in man and rational beings generally." " If then there is 
 a categorical imperative it must be such that, from its concep- 
 tion, what is necessarily an end for every one (because it is 
 an end in itself) constitutes an objective principle of will, and 
 can therefore serve as an universal practical law." 34 In short, 
 the categorical imperative must be stated so that it can be 
 seen to conserve the formal end. (Accordingly the practical 
 imperative will be as follows : So act as to treat humanity 
 whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every 
 case as an end withal, never as a means only. 3 n This state- 
 ment shows the first marked advance in Kant's thought 
 away from his own formalism. For whereas the categorical 
 imperative, as first stated, paid no regard to anything except 
 the volition and its consistency with universal law, here an 
 end, and therefore a matter, is introduced into the formula; 
 to which end the rational being must attend in testing the 
 morality of his volitions. Nevertheless this principle is not 
 material as though borrowed from experience : in this re- y 
 spect it is as empty a concept as the first formula. 
 
25] ELEMENTS OF KANT'S E THICS 2 5 
 
 These two formulae (which are merely the objective and 
 subjective sides of the same principle) need another to com- 
 plete them;/ for if the individual must make himself an end, 
 and at the same time will as though his maxim were to be- 
 come universal law, there must be a harmony between these 
 two necessities.) This is found in the idea of the will of 
 every rational being as a universally legislating will; which 
 idea alone can show the harmony of the subjective end with 
 universal practical reason, and is therefore the only proper 
 conception of a rational being. In the case of volition from 
 duty all interest is renounced, and it is this fact alone that 
 allows us to conceive of the will as universal legislator: 
 for the universality of the law deprives its legislator of any 
 special interest in it arising from self-love and the desire to 
 gratify the same. It follows from these principles that while 
 laws of duty are universal, they are of the subject's own 
 giving: this is the supreme ethical principle of Autonomy) 
 When one acts from interest he is not giving laws to himself 
 but is being dictated to by something extraneous to his 
 reason. When such foreign influence is absent, the princi- 
 ple is one of Autonomy. 
 
 In the final analysis the categorical imperative takes on 
 three forms, each of which involves the other two. In order 
 to be sure as to the Tightness of his volition, it is convenient 
 for one to reduce his maxim to all three formulae, and thus 
 put it to three tests. The difference between them is as 
 follows : The first is the form of a maxim, and is expressed 
 thus: [Act as though your maxim were to become universal 
 law. The second is the matter : Treat humanity as an end 
 in itself. The third is the completion (Bestimmung) of 
 these : Art as though your will were the universal legisla- 
 tive will.3^ 
 
 By the foregoing treatment the principles of Ethics have 
 been reduced to three ; of which the first alone, Kant thinks, 
 
26 THE FORMAL AND MATERIAL [ 2 6 
 
 had been previously discovered : ((i) Man is subject by duty 
 to laws; (2) the laws are all ofnis own giving; (3) they 
 are universal. 37 The elements of formal ethics as we gather 
 them from these three principles and from the preceding 
 discussion, are the Gaod Will, Duty as the ethical form of 
 Law, and Autonomy.! These are a priori, necessary and 
 universal, and ideal or formal products of pure reason. 
 
 Kant has not yet proven that autonomy exists, or that a 
 categorical imperative is possible; (this requires a critique, 
 being an analogue to the question, How is knowledge possi- 
 ble?). He has merely endeavored to analyze the conception 
 of morality, and having found these elements existing in it 
 a priori, now asks ad hominem, If morality has any reality, 
 in what does it lie, if not in its universality and a priority? 33 
 
 This completes the first two sections of the Grundlegung. 
 In the concluding portion, Kant deals with the conception of 
 Autonomy or Freedom in so far as it is necessary to do so 
 in order to prepare the mind for the problem of the Critique. 
 Kant's conception of Freedom as here brought out is that 
 of a determination of the will by reason alone, i. e. a formal 
 determination. This is possible only through the power of 
 the will to be a spontaneous cause independent of foreign 
 determining causes. There is no alternative choice how- 
 ever: "the unconditional command leaves the will no liberty 
 to choose the opposite." 39 In order that there may be 
 formal morality at all, this determination of the will by a 
 formal principle must be a reality; freedom must exist. 
 Such determination by the form of the law is the condition 
 also on which one may regard his maxims as practical uni- 
 versal laws. 40 In short, Kant contends that the will is not 
 governed by physical causation (through sensible desires) ; 
 but through freedom, by reason. This is accomplished by 
 noumenal causality, one taking effect without reference to 
 time-conditions. The apparent contradiction in the concep- 
 
2 7 ] ELEMENTS OF KANT'S E TIUCS 2 7 
 
 tion of freedom is this : that as noumenon one must regard 
 himself as lawgiver through the spontaneity of his will as a 
 free cause; while as phenomenon he must look upon himself 
 as subject to laws of natural causation and of morality. As 
 a free legislator in the noumenal world, one's acts tend to 
 conform to the autonomy of the will ; but being also a sensi- 
 ble phenomenon, it becomes possible for the dictates of 
 reason to be issued as an imperative " ought." 41 
 
 Though we thus assume the supersensible world, we can 
 think it as to its formal conditions only : 42 for noumenal 
 causality is merely an empty conception, and formal, not being 
 based on sensible intuition. Nevertheless, every being that 
 cannot act, except under the idea of such causality (freedom), 
 is just for that reason in a practical point of view really free. 43 
 The objective reality of freedom is shown in intentions."^ 
 The formal condition of the determination of k free will by 
 reason alone is Autonomy. 45 But to explain how this de- 
 termination is possible, how a mere formal principle (the 
 moral law) can of itself supply a spring without a matter (a 
 sensible impulse or an end to be attained) is beyond human 
 reason. 46 For pure reason contains as its matter knowledge 
 of objects, and as form the practical law of the universal 
 validity of its maxims. If knowledge be abstracted from the 
 reason, it is impossible to conceive of anything left which 
 can serve as spring : yet this is what formal morality de- 
 mands of us to accept. 47 
 
 With the Idea of Freedom ends the analysis : it has 
 shown that the conditions of morality are a Good Will, 
 which secures morality to itself by the obedience of its 
 maxims to Duty, conceives by reason its maxims as Univer- 
 sal Laws, and effects its ends through Freedom. The prob- 
 lem is to establish freedom as a reality: this is the work of 
 the Critique. 
 
 1 Abbott, p. 9. 2 Ibid., p. 63. s Ibid., p. 206. 
 
2 8 THE FORMAL AND MATERIAL [ 2 8 
 
 * Abbott, p. 12. 5 Ibid., p. 10. 
 
 6 It may well be asked if this can mean anything else than that the will is ab- 
 solute good because it produces, and is necessary to good results. Kant would 
 reply that, in any case, humanity has a worth which not only makes its good 
 volition necessary to good results, but marks itself out as the only truly good 
 object. 
 
 7 Abbott, p. io. Here, however, it is the goodness of the will that is said to 
 be more than a wish. 
 
 8 Ibid., p. 29. 9 Ibid., p. 268. 10 Ibid., p. 13. 
 
 11 Ibid., p. 296. " Ibid., p. 256. 13 Ibid., p. 327. 
 
 " Ibid., p. 16. 15 Ibid., p. 278. 16 Ibid., p. 279. 
 
 17 Ibid., p. 299. 18 Ibid., p. 299. 19 Ibid., p. 283. 
 
 20 Ibid., p. 282. « Ibid., p. 122. n Ibid, p. 169. 
 
 23 Ibid., p. 168. " Ibid., p. 33. » Ibid., p. 34. 
 
 *Ubid., p. 35. * Ibid., p. 38. » /K*, p. 38. 
 
 29 /&</., p. 44. 
 
 30 There is one place where the distinction is made, perhaps unconsciously, at 
 any rate at the expense of what we may call legal (or logical) formalism. This 
 in the Remark, p. 115 of Abbott : here universality (logical form) is not the test 
 of Tightness, but this office is performed by the sense of duty, or conscientious- 
 ness, as distinct from mere universality. It is a hint of the difference between 
 Law and Duty that impels Kant to distinguish between civil duties and those of 
 virtue in the Metaphysic of Ethics. 
 
 3 ' Abbott, p. 14- « Ibid., p. 45. 33 Ibid., p. 46. 
 
 84 Ibid., p. 47; the translation being somewhat altered. 
 
 3b Ibid., p. 47. ™Ibid., p. 54. ^Ibid., p. 51. ™Ibid., p. 64. 
 
 39 Ibid., p. 37. This refers only to the power to choose another command (if 
 one wishes to be moral) ; it says nothing of power to choose either one of two 
 courses. 
 
 40 Ibid., p. 1 14. 41 Ibid., p. 73. 42 Ibid., p. 79. 
 43 Ibid., p. 67. 44 Ibid., p. 146. 45 Ibid., p. 81. 
 * Ibid., p. 81. "Ibid^p. 82. 
 
III. 
 
 THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON. 
 
 THE purpose and plan of this work differ fundamentally 
 from those of the Grundlegung. The latter is the analysis 
 of the conceptions inevitably contained in morality as Kant 
 conceived it to be found in "popular moral philosophy;" 
 this is to prove or disprove the real existence of morality 
 by proving or disproving the reality of freedom. 
 
 In thus dealing with freedom we do more than establish 
 morality ; we give reality also to a rational idea, freedom, in 
 the category of causality. In so doing we give objective 
 reality also to all the other categories, but only so far as they 
 stand in necessary connection with the moral law. 1 The 
 Critique, therefore, besides being a contribution toEthics, is 
 a continuation of the epistemology of the Critique of Pure 
 Reason. Knowledge, which in that work had been confined 
 to phenomena, is here (as certitude) extended to the super- 
 sensible in so far as its formal conditions are concerned. 
 In this work also reality is given to the ideas of God and 
 immortality as conditions of the application of the will to 
 its a priori object. 
 
 The faculty by which reality is given to these supersensi- 
 ble ideas is the will, or practical reason, " a faculty either to 
 produce objects corresponding to ideas, or to determine our- 
 selves to the effecting of such objects." 2 
 
 It is much more difficult to understand the movement of 
 Kant's thought in the Critique than in the Grundlegung. In 
 the latter, certain preliminary difficulties being overcome, it 
 29] 29 
 
-O THE FORMAL AND MATERIAL V 30 
 
 is not bard to see through the gradations of the three sec- 
 tions and the way in which the empty concepts are devel- 
 oped one from the other till " morality is finally reduced to 
 the idea of freedom." In the Critique, however, Kant's his- 
 torical position must be remembered ; as in the first 
 Critique, it must be borne in mind that Kant was a pupil of 
 Leibnitzian Rationalism, forced to face the difficulties offered 
 by British empiricism. His "will" is a rational will, not a 
 development from the feelings. Reason is the highest faculty 
 of man, and as such and on account of the rebellious nature 
 of the passionate desires, has a right to dictate to the in- 
 clinations. On the other hand he denies most emphatically 
 the theses of the most worthy (from his point of view) of the 
 Empirical Schools, namely, the advocates of the "moral 
 sense." These were in brief the assertion, of the existence 
 of an innate sensory faculty inclining man to a love of the 
 good, without regard to his own advantage ; that this faculty 
 is independent of the will, and that man is naturally good. 
 These positions Kant has in mind all through the Critique; 
 their psychological foundation is discussed and somewhat is 
 conceded to them in the chapter on "Motives;" and he 
 specifically denies them in the four Theorems and the Prob- 
 lems and Remarks, with which the Analytic opens. 
 
 The most important fact to be observed is the relation of 
 Kant's Ethics to his Epistemology. In Ethics he does not 
 occupy the critical standpoint at all. So far as the suprem- 
 acy of Reason is concerned, he is still a faithful Wolffian. 
 As Hume did not find an intuitional ethics inconsistent 
 with an empirical psychology, so Kant does not find a 
 rationalistic ethics inconsistent with the middle standpoint 
 of his theory of knowledge. Besides the use of the two fac- 
 ulties (Sensibility and Understanding) as sources of knowl- 
 edge, of which he had said that " neither of them is to be 
 regarded as superior to the other," he now finds another 
 
3 i ] ELEMENTS OF KANT'S ETHICS 3 x 
 
 use for the second, namely, that of producing concepts 
 whose emptiness is no discredit to them. Nay, they lose all 
 efficiency, all worth, if they be in any degree mixed with the 
 matter of sense-perception. That supremacy of the reason 
 which he specifically rejects in the formation of constitutive 
 knowledge, he brings back — strengthened by its isolation — 
 in the regulative science of Ethics. In this science, there- 
 fore, he remains a true Wolffian. 
 
 In the Critique the terms Form and Matter are more 
 markedly developed into the peculiarly Kantian use of them. 
 That is, it is the fact that it is an a priori product of pure 
 reason rather than its universality that marks the form. 
 Perhaps this is the result of the strong emphasis given to 
 the notion of matter as the given in sensation. This how- 
 ever is only matter as it is presented in intuition to the 
 faculty of desire. But Kant limited the name material to 
 the practical principles which presuppose the object of de- 
 sire as the ground of determination of the will, and thereby 
 showed that his ordinary conception of matter was of the 
 sense-given. Nevertheless, just as readily might the name 
 of material have been bestowed on any theory which pre- 
 supposed an object, whether of desire, or of will, or any 
 other faculty, as the ground of determination of the will. 
 
 To escape this possibility, and to limit the name material 
 to sensationalistic theories, Kant asserts that in a theory of 
 pure autonomy the concept of the good (the matter) is 
 evolved only after the law has issued ; he wished thereby 
 also to escape controversy as to whether the will had been 
 determined by the law or by the idea of the good (i. e. t 
 formally or materially). In this difficulty Kant does not 
 avail himself of the escape provided him by his argument in 
 the Grundlegung. His position is this : he has declared all 
 material practical principles to be, ipso facto, contrary to 
 morality. But a rational being would destroy his own 
 
32 THE FORMAL AND MATERIAL ["32 
 
 rationality to act without a purpose, an object, in view; to 
 have such a purpose is to act on a material principle. 
 Kant escapes by asserting that in a moral act the law must 
 determine the will before the object, whether one of desire 
 or not, be presented ; he thus secures in theory a formal 
 determination. What he might have done was to have de- 
 clared the Good and the Law to be absolutely identical. 
 This course was open to him from his argument in the 
 Grundlegung, where his second formula of the categorical 
 imperative in effect was an affirmation of the fact that one 
 may will morally and at the same time will an end. 
 
 I have said that when Kant speaks of " matter," his usual 
 thought is of the sense-given. This came naturally, and 
 particularly because the given in sensation must always be 
 particular and contingent; and on that account this notion 
 of matter is closest allied to the Aristotelian conception with 
 which Kant was unconsciously trying to keep in touch. For 
 though the Summum Bonum or any other object of the 
 will, because it is an object, is material; yet it exists only 
 as an unrealized idea, a general term without content ; and 
 hence is removed from the traditional notion of matter. 
 This very fact, however, that the Summum Bonum is a 
 matter, is a sufficient refutation of Kant's second Theorem in 
 the Critique, viz., that all material practical principles as 
 such are of one and the same kind, and come under the 
 general head of self-love or private happiness. Because it is 
 only by a departure from his own use of the terms that a 
 universal end, as the Summum Bonum is, can be so classi- 
 fied ; nor in this case could the realization of the Good be 
 commanded as a duty. 
 
 The difference between Kant's and the traditional concep- 
 tion of form and matter is further seen in this confusion of 
 the summum bonum as both formal and material. In the 
 latter conception it is formal only. Kant was not primarily 
 
33] ELEMENTS OF KANT'S ETHICS 33 
 
 seeking the universal law, but what in his opinion is identi- 
 cal therewith, namely, the absolute. It was not a universal 
 Thou shalt that he sought, but an unconditional THOU shalt 
 addressed to each individual. The maxim of the will must 
 unconditionally be conformed to a universal law. He re- 
 garded this as the necessity demanded by the law, and ac- 
 cordingly looked on universality and absoluteness as the 
 same. Except in an ideally good society, a universal and 
 an unconditional command will coincide only under one 
 condition, that the circumstances be exactly the same in two 
 or more given instances. As this never occurs, it would 
 practically destroy the universality of an absolute command 
 to recognize such a condition as legitimate. Kant might 
 have granted it, however, without disadvantage, had he not 
 consecrated certain particular commands as universals ; thus 
 confounding the material with the formal. 
 
 At the present time, when so much stress is laid upon 
 mitigating circumstances, probably no one will uphold that 
 for a law to be unconditionally binding on one, it must at all 
 times and in all places be binding on all others who are sub- 
 ject to the idea of Law. That it is an absolute and also 
 universal law for all rational beings to do their duty is a cer- 
 tainty ; but this does not involve the alternative that specific 
 acts are always duties or else not at all. Taking this sup- 
 posed identity of universality and absoluteness as a fact, 
 Kant puts it to practical use by making the former the test 
 of the latter. He does this by asking what the result will be 
 should one act according to a certain precept. The out- 
 come of an act is not intended thereby to be the ground of 
 the duty; and yet one inevitably feels that the result is more 
 than a mere test of the Tightness of an act ; but for it to be 
 more is the destruction of the unconditionality of the given 
 duty. 
 
 Kant asserts that empirical principles will contradict each 
 
34 THE FORMAL AND MATERIAL [34 
 
 other. Apparently it never occurs to him to ask whether 
 the same be true concerning universal maxims. The ques- 
 tion is not, however, as argued by some, whether universal 
 maxims willed unconditionally will conflict. The problem 
 is the deeper one of the superior importance of different 
 bases for duties ; one ground being upheld by some, another 
 by others. Kant's thesis is that the rational being's first 
 duty as regards ends is to himself. This he owes to himself 
 as a rational being; and it having been seen to, virtue will 
 follow as its own reward. In all circumstances (universally), 
 and at any price (unconditionally), man is to protect the 
 humanity represented in himself, for " morality, and human- 
 ity as capable of it, alone has worth." No supposed duties 
 to others, even though also based on the dignity of human 
 nature, can transcend this primary duty or even conflict with 
 it; for social duties or duties to others generally are condi- 
 tional on that owed to self. " No good can come to man but 
 through himself. Likewise, no harm can come to him but 
 through himself. By no possible chance can aught befall a 
 man that hath not its origin or cause within the individual 
 himself. All which he experiences is for his good. When he 
 learns this he will then no more shun penalty, pain and death, 
 so-called." These are sentiments moving one naturally to 
 the position which Kant is expressing in so formal a manner. 
 In the case,, for example, of our duty to speak the truth 
 (or the opposite, as it may be) to a murderer who asks us 
 whether our friend, of whom he is in pursuit, has taken 
 refuge in our house; 3 the question at issue is whether the 
 ordinary duty to self, and to the humanity represented in 
 our person, is of greater or less obligation than the duty to 
 preserve a fellow-being's life. From the Stoic standpoint 
 the question is easily answered: the former duty is uncon- 
 ditional, and to be although indirectly the cause of another's 
 v death is not so bad as to violate the absolute duty to uphold 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 35] ELEMENTS OF KANT'S E THICS 3 5 
 
 the dignity of a man. And how is death an evil? " Anytus 
 and Melitus are able indeed to kill me, but they cannot 
 harm me." 
 
 There is an alternative in the case of veracity which 
 strangely is not often discussed. It is taken for granted 
 that one must answer, yes or no, when such a question as 
 that just discussed is put to him. But why answer at all? 
 If one will keep silence, there is nothing to make him speak. 
 In that case neither an extreme regard for a formal law will 
 lead one to harm the guiltless even indirectly; nor will his 
 duty to himself be violated by a departure from truth. But 
 that, it is objected, endangers one's own life. What of that? 
 "Is not to die better than to lead an evil life?" 4 And it is 
 observable that men's liking is more toward a dead hero 
 than a living coward. This alternative merely changes the 
 venue, so to speak; it does not affect the question of the 
 unconditional nature of the duty to veracity. 
 
 The general standpoint of moralists of Kant's type is that 
 of the second statement of the categorical imperative, that 
 humanity in one's own person and in that of every other is 
 to be treated as an end in itself. Beginning with the opin- 
 ion that goodness resides in the will, and that things beyond 
 control are ethically indifferent, it is but a step, an imper- 
 ceptible one often, to the conception of humanity as an end 
 in itself. Inevitably, however, one in this position comes 
 to regard certain actions as the embodiment of the absolute 
 virtue which it is duty to attain. There is no more logical 
 justification for it than for the opposite, and yet as a fact, 
 those who have asserted the singular goodness of the wiW 
 have likewise held to the universal validity of certain pre- 
 cepts. One would think that the very idea of a will would 
 lead to the opposite conception ; that is, to the opinion that 
 if one is conciously acting from regard to humanity he may 
 reverse the maxim of his will whenever the good of human- 
 
36 THE FORMAL AND MATERIAL [36 
 
 ity seems to call for it. For if the law is to be obeyed for 
 its own sake, though to be sure the Good Will is necessary 
 at every step, the goodness of the will is, notwithstanding, of 
 secondary value, being good only as a means to the attain- 
 ment of consistency; the man is regarded as made for the 
 law, not the law for the man. 
 
 The position I wish now to state — which puts man above 
 the law — holds that even in such a case as lying, whose 
 interdiction is undoubtedly conceived commonly as im- 
 planted, one is not to judge by the consistency or incon- 
 sistency with the law, but as to the probability whether 
 Good Will may not have prompted the departure from truth. 
 For if Good Will has prompted it, the law has been fulfilled, 
 without regard to the fact that there may be an incon- 
 sistence with a previous maxim. Suppose a person finds a 
 trusted friend has deceived him : is it a higher principle to 
 judge by the mere law, or to take into consideration that, 
 on account of the previously known character of the de- 
 ceiver, more than likely the deception is meant for the ulti- 
 mate good of the one deceived? Is not the latter mode a 
 greater exaltation of the Good Will? does it not put a 
 higher value on man as an end than that which would sacri- 
 fice him to a formula? From this point of view, therefore, 
 it is affirmed that to trust a friend, to put faith in man, and 
 thereby to show a good will, is of greater praise than to uphold 
 consistency with a law to the condemnation of good i?itentions. 
 
 Stoicism, however, has never taken this position, but has 
 chosen to consider the goodness of the will as lying in con- 
 sistency. The Self loses its primary importance ; from life 
 is taken its sacredness, and in place of a principle we 
 have a formula. For the preservation of this formula, life 
 itself is to be sacrificed ; and the world agrees in its admira- 
 tion of such sacrifice. For the grandeur of Stoicism, and the 
 reason for its tendency to formalize, may be explained from 
 
37] ELEMEN TS OF KANT'S E THICS 3 y 
 
 this very belief, that simply because a man is worth so much, 
 he should strive to attain to perfect agreement with the dicta 
 of Duty. Consistency, the manifestation of Duty the most 
 difficult, is mistaken for the thing itself, and whenever a Stoic 
 speaks of the law he means the formula, the shell, of the law. 5 
 
 This position is avowedly Kant's at the very start; when, 
 therefore, he brings in the conception of the end, it is by a 
 reversal of the road taken by the Stoic — for the Greek the end 
 was everything. Each, however, finally arrived at a postu- 
 lation of actions as good in themselves, which we shall find 
 Kant doing in his treatment of the summum bonum. His 
 primary position had been that the Good Will is the highest 
 good, and this he now affirms of Virtue as an element of 
 the summum bonum. But there is nothing in his later expo- 
 sition to denote that the possession of a Good Will and 
 Virtue were identified in his thought; that is to say, in the 
 time between the two expositions Virtue had gravitated from 
 the position of a quality of mind to one of action. In this 
 frame of mind the doing of certain actions and the not doing 
 of others become the objects of unconditional commands ; 
 life, regarded as sacred more strongly by modern Ethics 
 than by any other, becomes ethically indifferent ; and in con- 
 trast with it, it becomes impossible to argue for the occa- 
 sional rightfulness of lying, stealing, killing, unchastity, or to 
 make the opposite duties conflict. 
 
 The Individual being the highest end, consistency with self 
 as this end becomes paramount duty. It is impossible, how- 
 ever, to find anything in an empty a priori form with which 
 to be consistent. We can, nevertheless, calculate the effect 
 if every one did either of two contrary acts ; that one is right 
 which will best promote the Ideal Society, the Kingdom of 
 Ends, as that best promotes the ideal man ; that is, " morality 
 consists in the reference of all action to the legislation which 
 alone can render a kingdom of ends possible! ' 6 For a test of 
 
38 THE FORMAL AND MATERIAL [38 
 
 duty, therefore, Kant is compelled to leave the form of the 
 law, but yet finds it in the realm of the a priori and uncon- 
 ditioned ; for the kingdom of ends is altogether an Idea of 
 pure reason. 
 
 On the above principle one may will as he pleases ; it will 
 soon become apparent that certain volitions can be willed 
 ethically while others (also universals) cannot. In short, 
 universality is not a test of Tightness, and the form of the 
 law must be abandoned for the form (sense) of duty. This 
 conclusion is fully elucidated by Kant himself in the third 
 Theorem and the appended Remark, but he conceals from 
 himself by phraseology an outcome which destroys one of 
 his most important though not fundamental doctrines, the 
 necessity for outward consistency. 
 
 The Analytic of Pure Practical Reason 
 
 The first part of the Critique merely reiterates the position 
 of the Grundlegung, that all material principles are empirical, 
 hence can furnish only maxims of advice, not universal laws ; 
 that such principles place the determining principle of the 
 will in the lower desires, and in demanding a material end 
 (the satisfaction of those desires) place themselves under the 
 head of self-love. Contrariwise, the opinion is reasserted 
 that a maxim can be a law and moral only when it determines 
 the will by its form. 
 
 Ethics in Kant's conception is necessarily a science of 
 Laws; it must command, and that it may do so must be 
 based on the sense of duty. Ethics cannot merely state 
 what ends are worthy of attainment, then describe the means 
 to their accomplishment and dub such description a "law." 
 There must be a command; and in the phrase " determina- 
 tion by the form of the law" we must, to understand its full 
 significance, put the weight of emphasis on law with all that 
 the word can imply. The reason for this is found in his 
 
OF TMg 
 
 UNlVEHSfTY 
 
 
 39] ELEMENTS OF KANT'S ETHICS 39 
 
 conception of the relation of Reason and Desire. Duty is 
 not simply what one ought to do — he sometimes loses sight 
 of this essential — but is also what one does not desire to do. 
 Except in his treatment of the summum bonum Kant does not 
 seem to have been able to conceive of a duty being desir- 
 able, and the realization of that element of the summum 
 bonum which is desirable he afterwards denies to be a duty. 
 An Ethics which does not contain as its chief element (and 
 this is the characteristic of all hedonistic systems) the fact 
 of law, of a law commanding by the idea of law (the sense 
 of duty) is no Ethics at all. 
 
 The law of which Ethics treats, we have already learned, 
 to be a law of pure practical reason must be necessary, 
 universal and unconditioned. Such a law can proceed only 
 from pure reason a priori, and can be nothing but the con- 
 cept of a law. It governs by an ill- defined feeling of 
 oughtness. 
 
 These requirements being regarded as postulates not 
 needing proof, Theorem I. proceeds from them to assert 
 that all practical principles which presuppose an object 
 (matter) of the faculty of desire as the ground of determina- 
 tion of the will are empirical and can furnish no practical 
 laws. 7 For such principles cannot be based on the idea of 
 a law, inasmuch as they presuppose an object of sensible 
 intuition ; nor can they be universal and unconditioned. 
 
 An object of sensible intuition, pre-supposed as deter- 
 minant of the will, can bear no relation to the subject except 
 through a feeling of pleasure in the realization of the object. 
 As a result we have Theorem II., that all material practical 
 principles as such are of one and the same kind,, and come 
 under the general principle of self-love or private happiness. 8 
 In doing so they violate all the conditions of a law except 
 that of necessity, and this necessity is not one of reason (and 
 consequently not formal), but a material necessity of sensible 
 
40 THE FORMAL AND MATERIAL Va Q 
 
 nature. In this theorem Kant definitely limits the name 
 material to theories and principles which pre-suppose an ob- 
 ject of the faculty of desire. Properly he had no right to 
 do this, as any principle which pre-supposes an object is 
 material, without regard to the faculty of which it is an 
 object. 
 
 It follows from Theorem I. that material practical princi- 
 ples being unable to furnish ethical laws, a rational being 
 cannot regard his maxims as universal laws unless he con- 
 ceives them as principles which determine the will not by 
 their matter, but by their form only (Theorem III.). 9 For 
 only a form can proceed a priori from pure reason, and only 
 a concept thought a priori can serve as an unconditioned 
 and universal law. Kant's proof of Theorem III. is thus 
 stated : The matter is the object of the will. Either this is 
 the determining ground of the will or it is not. In the 
 former case, the rule of the will cannot be a law, as it would 
 be empirical (Theorem I.). If the matter be subtracted, 
 there is nothing left but the bare form, the idea, of a law. 
 Hence either one cannot regard his maxims as laws at all, or 
 he must conceive them as such by virtue of their form only. 
 Kant immediately subjoins in a remark, however, that not 
 every form of maxim is fit to serve as a law. He proceeds 
 to show that the desire for happiness is universal, but is not 
 on that account a universal law. This specific case may be 
 explained on other grounds, but notwithstanding, it remains 
 true that Kant shows conclusively that a formal maxim is not 
 necessarily a universal law. 
 
 This position of Kant's, that a formal maxim is not e.) ipso 
 a universal law, is capable of two interpretations. He may 
 have here seen that a maxim may have the form of a law 
 without conveying the idea of a law ; in other words, that 
 a mandate having all the formal appearance of a law may be 
 directed to a person without his being in the least impelled 
 
4 i ] ELEMENTS OT KANT'S ETHICS 4I 
 
 by a sense of duty (the idea of law) to obey the command. 
 Or, in the second place (what is really the same thing), he 
 may have had an inkling of the distinction before made be- 
 tween Law and Duty, that the former commands the same 
 thing always, the latter need not. In either case it is shown 
 that to universalize a maxim is not thereby to make it moral. 
 
 If the law must be the a priori product of the reason, it is 
 impossible to conceive it as given (commanded) to any one 
 except the being from whom it proceeds, for it cannot be re- 
 garded in its pure state, and its necessity would be disproven, 
 did one have to wait till the law be given him. In short, 
 from the requirement that the law be a priori y the Autonomy 
 of the will follows as a matter of course (Theorem IV.). 10 
 
 Following the d priority of the law, the sole principle of 
 morality must " consist in the independence on all matter of 
 the law (namely, a desired object), and in the determination 
 of the elective will by the mere universal legislative form 
 [idea] of which its maxim must be capable." This gives us 
 a negative and a positive view of the same fact of freedom : 
 the former being the independence on the matter of the 
 law ; the latter, the self-legislation of a being by pure prac- 
 tical reason. Nevertheless, the matter of the law need not 
 be expunged (even were it possible) in order to obtain 
 autonomy : only the matter must not be present as the con- 
 dition of the possibility of the law. Every volition must have 
 an object ; but this is not necessarily the determining prin- 
 ciple of the will. Thus, one may will the happiness of others, 
 but only on condition he will it as a universal, and not for 
 the sake of the happiness. 11 
 
 If the principle of morality maintained by Kant is one of 
 a priori Autonomy, and we grant that reason can give rise 
 to but one a priori principle, all other theories may be 
 grouped as heteronomous. 12 It does not follow, however, 
 that all other theories are material and seek the satisfaction of 
 
42 THE FORMAL AND MA TERIAL [42 
 
 the inclinations. The Moral Sense theory, for instance, had 
 as its chief characteristic that it asserted the existence of a 
 sense whose only object was to determine one to action 
 immediately without reference to personal advantage of any 
 sort. It was thus as strong a protest against Egoistic 
 Hedonism as Kantianism itself. According to Hutcheson, 
 self-interest cannot be the sole moral motive ; it can merely 
 be added to the motive to give zest to the pursuit of virtue. 13 
 Moral Sense, he says, is the power of receiving "other per- 
 ceptions of moral actions than those of advantage." u " The 
 virtuous agent is never apprehended by us as acting only 
 from views of his own interest, but as principally influenced 
 by some other motive." 15 Wherein the Moral Sense theory 
 is heteronomous, according to Kantian principles, is in 
 placing its fundamental principle in sensibility instead of 
 the reason. Indeed, the moral sense is similar to " Re- 
 spect" in Kant's system in many respects (not the least of 
 which is that they are both independent of the will) ; Kant 
 himself makes the comparison. 
 
 In the case also of the " Will of God " theory, it is not a 
 desired object that determines the will ; and it also is not 
 material. For religious teachers, Hebrew and Christian, 
 have constantly maintained that the law is not fulfilled when 
 executed for some object beyond the mere law, or the will 
 of God conceived as law. Its heteronomy must be sought 
 therefore in another principle : this is the fact that while the 
 law is a pure moral mandate, yet it is not possible to be 
 willed a priori by the rational being himself ; since its very 
 conception is that it is given from without. 
 
 In both these cases it is quite possible that, if an adherent 
 of one of them were asked wherefore he acted as he did, he 
 could give no other reason than, for the pleasure he expected 
 therefrom (save that in the Moral Sense theory the will is 
 not free, and there can of course be no " wherefore "). But 
 
43] ELEMENTS OF KANT'S ETHICS 43 
 
 the distinguishing characteristic of the two systems is that 
 they never (till Paley's time, perhaps) asked themselves 
 this question, for inability to answer which Kant has re- 
 jected them. 
 
 Kant's refutation of the theory of Perfection is a matter of 
 definitions. With him perfection " is the fitness or sufficiency 
 of a thing for all sorts of purposes," 16 ability to do something 
 which must on this account be of superior value. In the 
 end, however, he adopts perfection as "an end which is also 
 a duty," and in so doing sets aside the above definition for 
 the broader conception of it as the conquest of will over 
 animal nature, and as a specific mode of realizing humanity 
 as an end in itself. 17 Indeed, no other interpretation can be 
 given to the second formula of the categorical imperative 
 than that it commands perfection as an unconditional duty. 
 
 Returning over the theorems which we have outlined, 
 observe that in the first, Kant makes the mistake of thinking 
 that every "presupposed object of the faculty of desire" is 
 necessarily presupposed as the ground of determination of the 
 will, that "to presuppose an object which gives pleasure is 
 to presuppose it for its pleasure." Not only is this a mis- 
 take in itself; it also cuts off Kant's principle from its only 
 means of becoming more than empty. A principle, to be 
 more than a principle ; to be, that is, the determinator of the 
 will, necessarily presupposes an object towards which the 
 will is to be motived. In order to preserve the purity of 
 Duty as a moral motive in this case Kant saw clearly that 
 the object must not be sought on account of its desirability. 
 But it is, to say the least, essentially erroneous to think 
 that the form can have any importance apart from the mat- 
 ter concerned in the judgment. The law of duty may be 
 necessary and universal, but it can have no application when 
 formulated out of relation to the matter to which man's duty 
 extends. Let the law command consistency with self, or 
 
 aty. 
 
44 THE FORMAL AND MA TERIAL [44 
 
 with the law, or the realization of an object outside the self, 
 or what you please, in any case it presupposes the matter 
 given in experience to tell what duty is at any one time. 
 Kant is trying in ethics, as has been said of his Deduction 
 of the Categories in the Critique of Pure Reason, to solve a 
 problem by means of the intellect alone, which belongs as 
 essentially to the matter with which intellect deals. In order 
 to preserve the purity of the law as a motive, it was neces- 
 sary to abstract from the pleasure inherent in the attainment 
 of its object ; it was not necessary, it was ruinous, to rule 
 out the object altogether. 
 
 It is not against pleasure as an object that Kant is contend- 
 ing, but as a moral motive, a principle of determination of the 
 will. He has no puritanical objections to happiness in itself. 
 But the strange fact is that he recognized that an object may 
 be sought without being desired for itself, *.*., being made a 
 determining principle of the will; 18 but, except in one fleet- 
 ing instance, 19 he refused to see further that pleasure may in- 
 here in this object, and not be the determining principle. 
 That the " principle of self-love " determines the will by 
 a desire for a specific object is undoubtedly the opinion 
 that is uppermost in his mind in stating the second theo- 
 rem. But, however ignoble the principle of self-love is, it is 
 not at all true that a specific end may not be made the ob- 
 ject of the will and not fall under the head of this principle. 
 The happiness of all is a universal and formal, and as such 
 may be the ground of determination of the will. One's own 
 happiness is necessarily included in the universal happiness. 
 Now it is our duty to realize the summum bonum, but not to 
 make it the determining principle of the will. In the same 
 way one may realize his own happiness, making universal 
 happiness the determining maxim of the will. Presented in 
 this way there is no conflict between autonomy and the real- 
 ization of private happiness as an end. This point of view, 
 
45] ELEMENTS OF KANT'S ETHICS 45 
 
 however, it never seems to occur to Kant to take (except in 
 the one instance noted) ; but he always takes the stand that 
 the being seeking an object whose realization is pleasure, 
 must be determined by the pleasure or by the object as 
 pleasant. 
 
 The Deduction of tlie Principles of Pure Practical Reason 
 
 The theorems of which we have sketched the outline are 
 the principles of pure practical reason (corresponding to the 
 principles of the pure understanding in the first Critique). 
 It is next necessary to substantiate the principles for analy- 
 sis ; and as Kant has " finally reduced the definite conception 
 of morality to the idea of freedom,"* his task reduces itself 
 to the necessity of establishing the objective reality of this 
 concept. The great difficulty in accomplishing this object 
 arises from the fact that there are no sensible intuitions giv- 
 ing rise to the idea of freedom, and its reality cannot on that 
 account be proven by showing it in examples drawn from ex- 
 perience. Nor indeed can the existence of the moral law or 
 of freedom be proven at all by theoretical reason. The exis- 
 tence of the law is a fact, and requires no ground of justifica- 
 tion ; it is absolute. If the law exists, freedom is a reality : 
 there can be no duty and no law, if there be no power of 
 obeying the law. 21 The proof of the objective reality of free- 
 dom draws with it that of the existence of a supersensible 
 world ; for the very concept of freedom is of a causality inde- 
 pendent on physical causation. 
 
 With the acceptance of the objective reality of freedom we 
 have an idea of the causality which has got into the mind 
 by other means than through the category of causality. 
 Inasmuch, therefore, as its positive conception is one of 
 nothing more nor less than a kind of causality, freedom is 
 itself a category. It is not an instance of causation abstracted 
 from sense-percepts and subsumed under a category ; it is 
 
46 THE FORMAL AXD MA TERIAL [46 
 
 a form, a concept of causation, and ranks with the category 
 itself. 
 
 Is this category a function of the understanding, a form of 
 conceiving, as are the others? That it is, Kant infers from 
 the impossibility of thinking oneself to be other than free. 
 As in our relation with the ordinary objects of sense, we can- 
 not think except we conceive them as caused ; so in forming 
 our conception of rational beings, we cannot think any such 
 unless we conceive them as free. Only on the supposition 
 of freedom's reality can the moral law be possible ; for this 
 is the condition which is included in every conception of the 
 moral law, that the concept of responsibility (the law) has 
 no application except to a being whom we judge to be free. 
 
 What is the " objective reality " which is predicated of the 
 idea of freedom ? Is it the reality of a notion, of a category, 
 of a (Platonic) Idea, or of a thing to be realized but not now 
 existing? There are many considerations in favor of the 
 last view ; but undoubtedly if the faculty of freedom is a cate- 
 gory, it has the same reality as a category. The concept of 
 freedom is therefore a functional activity of the Understand- 
 ing. In sensible experience we do not intuite a notion of 
 cawse ; we see a chain of events and cannot help thinking 
 causality to be present; exactly so, when we see a man 
 doing his duty we cannot help thinking freedom to be there. 
 This, it will be observed, does not prove the existence of 
 freedom as a spontaneous cause, but only that its conception 
 is a form of judgment to which we refer moral actions ; that 
 is, that we cannot think in moral matters without assuming 
 it. Nevertheless the only ultimate proof of the fact of free- 
 dom is this necessity. 
 
 Exactly what Kant would understand by the "fact" of 
 freedom is very hard to decide. If it is only an idea as he 
 says, what influence can it have as a cause? Granted 
 there is a functional activity of the understanding by which 
 
47] ELEMENTS OF KANT'S ETHICS 47 
 
 we are compelled to think man as free, of what importance 
 is that if it does not give him the power of influencing phe- 
 nomenal events? Kant apparently believes in the will as a 
 spontaneous cause and as a power of alternative choice, but 
 that it has no influence on actions, as they are phenomena ; 
 after the will has made its choice the succession of natural 
 events goes on as though the will did 7iot exist. On the other 
 hand, he assumes continually that freedom is a causality 
 in the same sense as cause in the physical world. This is 
 shown in the thesis (though he did not necessarily accept 
 that) of the third Antinomy, wherein it is shown that a free 
 cause is necessary to explain phenomena, and phenomena are 
 subject to physical causation ; and again he says that free- 
 dom is the power man has of controlling his appetites, in 
 other words, of interfering in the course of natural caus- 
 ation. 22 Apparently, therefore, from the point of view of 
 actual experience, the matter of Ethics, Kant's freedom of 
 the will is a piece of logical humor. When he says, for 
 instance, that " a being that cannot act except with the idea 
 of freedom is bound by the same laws that would oblige a 
 being who was actually free," 23 it does not seem to occur to 
 him to ask, What is such a law and what effect can it have 
 on the life of the being it obligates? Such freedom would 
 be an illusion, and this argument is one to delight the heart 
 of a determinist. By limiting freedom to the intelligible 
 world he denied the possibility of free causality in the phe- 
 nomenal world, and thus affirmed the antithesis of the third 
 Antinomy. Cutting off the freedom of the will from phe- 
 nomena prevented his holding to a belief in alternative 
 choice ; to which, however, he sometimes inconsistently 
 gives expression. 
 
 These difficulties are left unsolved by the "Deduction" 
 and prevent one's accepting the arguments and conclusions 
 of that section. But it would be a mistake to conclude that 
 
48 THE FORMAL AND MA TERIAL [43 
 
 Kant has left his doctrine in this perilous position ; from 
 which he finally rescues it in the " Critical Examination of 
 the Analytic." 2 * 
 
 It will be observed that in the preceding criticism I have 
 assumed that man as noumenon and man as phenomenon can 
 have no possible interrelation. Such, however, is not Kant's 
 conception. Homo noumenon and homo phenomenon are two 
 utterly irreducible elements of the one man, but they are 
 only one man. They act indissolubly and together through 
 the organic unity of the individual. I have been supposing 
 them to be two beings bound up in one body, but having no 
 organic relation at all ; each doing its work and interfering not 
 at all with the other. They are, on the other hand, one and the 
 same being: noumenon is the man out of time, phenomenon 
 is the man in time. Under this conception, what does Free- 
 dom mean? Freedom is the power the Reason has of /re- 
 determining the part which the will as a spontaneous cause 
 shall take in the course of events. Before an event occurs, 
 the reason can forecast it with some degree of accuracy, and 
 decide that it will use its causality in one direction or an- 
 other. The reason, therefore, acts out of (before) time, and 
 for it to be determinable in time is a contradiction of its defi- 
 nition as a deliberative faculty. Reason asks always, What 
 next? and not, What am I doing now? The latter is the 
 business of consciousness (spontaneity). Reason is the fac- 
 ulty of deliberation ; will is a spontaneous cause : combine 
 the two notions organically and we have the deliberative will, 
 the practical reason. As a phenomenon, one belongs in the 
 chain of cause and effect; consciousness is the power of 
 acting spontaneously (from within) ; reason is the power 
 of directing this spontaneity in a certain channel, subject to 
 the laws of causation : the whole makes of a rational finite 
 being a free cause. 
 
 
49 ] ELEMENTS OF KANT'S ETHICS 49 
 
 The Concept of an Object of pure practical Reason. 
 
 In the Introductory Section of this essay we have men- 
 tioned Kant's definition of Ethics as the science of Ends. 
 Its very conception, therefore, entails an object; but only an 
 object of thought, an Ideal existing as a form in the concep- 
 tion of the Reason. Under this conception we may include 
 two of the Ideas of Reason, Freedom and God. One notion 
 of freedom is of a continually progressive state ; for the will 
 though desiring to be free from the influence of the inclina- 
 tions can only gradually attain that end, and never thor- 
 oughly in this life. Of God two general conceptions may 
 be found in the Ethics: God as Perfection 25 and as Su- 
 preme Dispenser of Happiness. This is material perfection 
 however, not a quality of will, and Kant denies that it is 
 an ethical end, though this opinion is held by some theo- 
 sophists. 26 It is an Idea but not an Ideal of Reason. The 
 same is true of the Idea of Immortality ; it is not an end, 
 valuable in its own worth, but is existence in that amount of 
 time necessary to perfection. 
 
 Leaving out of view, therefore, these Ideas, an Ideal, an 
 object of pure practical reason, is an effect possible to be 
 produced through freedom ; and is, therefore, only an idea 
 existing in the intelligible world. The only objects of prac- 
 tical reason are those of good and evil. The Ideal of course 
 must be the former; more specifically (as we learn in the 
 Metaphysic of Ethics) they are one's own perfection and the 
 happiness of others. 37 
 
 In the treatment of the object as an element of formal 
 morality, we have a somewhat different conception of moral- 
 ity as a whole. The forms treated of in the Grundlegung 
 are presuppositions necessary to the very conception of 
 morality. The formal object on the other hand is the matter 
 of the will. As such it must be excluded from pure moral- 
 ity ; for the goodness of the volition will be destroyed if the 
 
5° 
 
 THE FORMAL AND MA TERIAL 
 
 [50 
 
 / 
 
 will be determined by desire for the object. Nevertheless, 
 an object is a necessary presupposition, and in so far it is 
 formal. But though an end was found in the Grundlegung, 
 it was humanity as an absolutely worthy end. Now Kant 
 succeeds later in showing to his own satisfaction that to treat 
 humanity as an end, is to will one's own perfection and 
 others' happiness, but it is only by a stretch of the imagina- 
 tion that we can believe him to be meaning the same thing 
 in both cases. For in the first case morality pertains to will 
 only ; in the Critique it is actions which are good in them- 
 selves, if they are produced by a will determined by the 
 universal law. 28 This statement is the mark in the progress 
 of Kant's theory from the abstract to the concrete. At first 
 the practical reason had been concerned, in his conception, 
 only with the determination of the will without regard to 
 ends. Then an end was introduced, the conception of Man 
 as an end in himself. Here the last step is made, where 
 reason is employed for the determination of causes to effects 
 in the sensible nature of man, his physical welfare being 
 advanced by practical reason (besides, as formerly, by the 
 theoretical) ; and where actions, ends outside Humanity, are 
 denominated as good in themselves. "The moral law com- 
 mands me to make the highest possible good in a world the 
 ultimate object of all my conduct." 29 Although this may 
 refer to the good only of the rational beings in the world, 
 yet the general impression at this time is that his conception 
 of good has broadened, and this opinion is strengthened by 
 the classification of certain actions as absolute good. Kant 
 himself seems to realize this tendency and its necessity, espe- 
 cially in the section on the Typic, where he speaks of " special 
 difficulties arising from this, that a law of freedom [super- 
 physical causality] is to be applied to actions which belong 
 to physical nature." 30 
 
 Although it is a duty to realize the good as an ethical end, 
 
5 i ] ELEMENTS OF KANT'S E THICS 5 ! 
 
 yet its concept must not be determined before the moral 
 law, but only after it and by means of it. For the action is 
 good in itself but not on account of itself (through any in- 
 trinsic worth of its own), that is, its performance is a duty, 
 but only because by means of the law we learn that it is 
 good. The only way to prevent heteronomy, therefore, is 
 to determine by the law what action is to be done, and its 
 goodness will follow because it conforms to the law. There- 
 fore, the notions of good and evil do not originally refer at 
 all to objects (as do the categories), but to the volition whose 
 goodness is, as it were, transferred to the action without re- 
 gard to the pleasure or pain experienced in it. 
 
 What are the actions to accomplish which a will, however 
 determined, must exercise its volition? Plainly those only 
 of the sensible world. That is, our formal object of the will 
 must be filled, if at all, with matter supplied to the moral 
 judgment by sensibility according to laws of natural causa- 
 tion in the phenomenal world. Now as freedom has nothing 
 to do with the causation of phenomena, it may very well 
 happen that an act determined on according to the law of 
 duty is not possible as a matter of fact. In such a case how 
 are we to judge of failure to accomplish a moral end? The 
 solution of the difficulty, says Kant, is found in the fact that 
 having once determined his volition in accordance with the 
 law, a rational being is not responsible for the outcome of 
 the event, whether it be according as he has willed or not. 11 
 The question brings out an important fact however, that 
 Kant recognises that the general conception of the good is 
 not fit to serve as matter of the will ; its matter must come 
 from the facts of daily experience. In recognition of this 
 fact it is necessary to state the categorical imperative in 
 terms of natural causation, thus : ask yourself whether, if the 
 action you propose were to take place by a law of nature ', 
 you could regard it as possible by your own will. 32 
 
52 THE FORMAL AND MATERIAL r> 2 
 
 This is the Type of the moral law. For instance, I see a 
 man killed by accident. Judging from it as a fact of nature, 
 I conclude that it would be as evil morally to will myself to 
 commit such an act as it is for it to happen unintentionally 
 in the course of events. Of the Type of the law it is to be 
 observed, that being formal and universal it is as empty as 
 we have already seen the categorical imperative to be, and 
 consequently it is impossible to draw trustworthy conclusions 
 from it. 
 
 The Motives of Pure Practical Reason 
 
 In the Grundlegung, 33 Kant has distinguished between the 
 spring (Triebfeder) as the subjective ground of desire, and 
 the motive or objective ground of volition (Bewegungs- 
 grund). Chapter III. of the Critique is on the "springs" of 
 pure practical reason. This is translated " motives " by 
 Abbott, Kant having altered his terms ; for he has already 
 said that a volition resting on a spring is material, but now 
 treats of such as formal. He is therefore using the word 
 spring in the same sense that he previously used motive. 
 
 If an act rests on feeling (Triebfeder) it may conform to 
 the law, but will possess only legality. 34 To be moral it 
 must find its ground of determination (motive, Bewegungs- 
 grund) in the form of the law. In maintaining this Kant 
 asserts that the form can and must be both objective and 
 subjective ground of determination of the will. In filling 
 these two offices, it is dangerous to allow other motives (for 
 instance, that of interest as upheld by Hutcheson) to co- 
 operate with the sense of Duty. The essential point of all 
 determination of the will by the law is that as a free will it is 
 determined simply by the law without the co-operation of 
 sensible impulses and even to the rejection of all such. 35 
 
 In withdrawing from the aid of such impulses or in com- 
 batting their influence, the action of the law as a motive is 
 only negative; the succeeding feeling may be called a pain. 
 
53] ELEMENTS OF KANT'S ETHICS 53 
 
 Consequently, as law as a motive can be known a priori 
 only, we have a case in which we can from a priori consider- 
 ations determine the relation of a cognition to a feeling of 
 pleasure or pain. 
 
 All inclinations, regarded as material motives, constitute 
 self-regard. This is either self-love (selfishness) or satis- 
 faction with oneself (self-conceit). There is a self-love 
 which on account of its reasonableness is only checked by 
 the pure practical reason. Self-conceit, on the other hand, 
 the law strikes down altogether, and in so doing commands 
 respect. Respect thus becomes the only feeling known 
 a priori y being the result of an intellectual cause. ^ 
 
 The moral law performs three offices : 36 it is the formal 
 determining principle of action by means of practical reason ; 
 as such it informs the subject of the law that his volition must 
 conform to what the sense of duty directs him to perform. 
 The law is also a material and objective determining prin- 
 ciple of the objects of actions in so far as in willing it is to be 
 decided whether they are good or evil ; that is, the law is 
 capable of denoting what ends are good or the opposite. 
 The statement of these two offices are a reiteration of the 
 first two formulae of the categorical imperative, and corres- 
 ponds to the division of a maxim into a form (its universal 
 validity) and a matter (its end). 37 Besides these, the law, 
 as it produces a feeling, respect for itself, is also a subjective 
 determining principle, a motive to action. It is a motive 
 which deprives the will of every material spring, taking 
 "from self-love its influence, and from self-conceit its illu- 
 sion." The law is the objective moral motive; the sub- 
 jective motive is respect for the law. 3 !^ 
 
 Respect applies to persons, not to things. It is "a tribute 
 which we cannot refuse to merit, whether we will or not." 3 9 
 Although a feeling, it is one neither of pleasure nor pain : 
 the former is shown in the fact that we yield to it reluctantly, 
 
A 
 
 54 THE FORMAL AND MATERIAL [54 
 
 and always endeavor to reduce the credit due a man for his 
 morality. That it is not painful is known to those who have 
 risen far enough above self-conceit to contemplate the law in 
 its majesty. In motivation of the will through respect for 
 the law, the will is first determined objectively and directly ; 
 freedom restricts the influence of the inclinations, and thus 
 produces a feeling of displeasure, which can be known a 
 priori from the moral law. The feeling of displeasure, how- 
 ever, is itself a sign of the ascendancy of the law over material 
 considerations, and is followed by respect for the law. Re- 
 spect (all pathological obstacles having been removed) thus 
 becomes the motive of the will ; but only to objects approved 
 by the sense of duty. An action according to the law fol- 
 lowing on motivation through respect is duty ; which includes 
 in its conception obligation, a determination to actions with- 
 out regard to the reluctance felt in doing them. That is, 
 obligation is the duty arising from the necessity that the will 
 be determined by the law ; duty, however, is a broader con- 
 ception and includes with this moral determination the ne- 
 cessity of objective agreement of the action with the law. 40 
 
 The strongest argument that can be brought against the 
 moral sense theory (and it applies more forcibly to more 
 egoistic schools) is that it disregards the necessity of con- 
 straint by a sense of duty to check the inclinations, as human 
 nature is constituted and must ever remain so long as physi- 
 cal human nature endures. We can never be quite free from 
 desires and inclinations, and on that account " stand under a 
 discipline [a restraint] of reason, and in all our maxims must 
 not forget our subjection to it, nor withdraw anything there- 
 from, or by an egotistic presumption diminish aught of the 
 authority of the law (although our own reason gives it) so 
 as to set the determining principle of our will, even though 
 the law be conformed to, anywhere else but in the law itself 
 and in respect for this law. Duty and obligation are the 
 
55] ELEMENTS OF KANT'S ETHICS 55 
 
 only names that we must give to our relation to the moral 
 law." 4I If constraint of the faculty of desire can be got only 
 through a discipline of reason^ then that is a sufficient justifi- 
 cation for the rationalistic standpoint, for the view that the 
 attainment of morality depends on the presence in the agent 
 of a sense of responsibility, which must determine the will 
 by presenting its moral principles as unconditioned laws. 
 
 In what is the basis of this Duty which governs rational 
 nature? It can spring from "nothing less than a power 
 which elevates man above himself (as a part of the world of 
 sense)," which connects him with an order (conceivable 
 only to the intellect) which commands the sensible world. 
 "This power is nothing but personality ," ' 42 and personality is 
 independence on the mechanism of nature and also the fac- 
 ulty of a being which is subject to laws given by its own 
 reason. Duty, that is, can be the offspring of reason alone ; 
 it is a form, an idea, not a sense as English-speaking people 
 have chosen to regard it. , 
 
 This then is the nature of the true motive of pure practical 
 reason ; it can be nothing else than a product, a conception, 
 of the reason itself. It is no other than the pure moral law, 
 inasmuch as that makes us conscious of the sublimity of our 
 own supersensible existence and subjectively produces re- 
 spect for our higher nature. 43 
 
 One cannot fail to observe in Kant's conception of respect 
 for the law an analogy to the moral sense of Hutcheson. 
 Many of Kant's statements as to what respect is not seem 
 directly aimed at Hutcheson's description of the attributes 
 and office of the moral feeling, with a view to denying its 
 validity and truthfulness. The two feelings are both inde- 
 pendent of the will and both act without any relation to 
 pleasure or pain, neither being connected with' objects of in- 
 tuition. Reverence for the majesty of the law is called forth 
 in the midst of, and even by, displeasure at the baffling of 
 
5 6 THE FORMAL AND MATERIAL [56 
 
 lust ; Moral Sense compels love toward the benefactor of his 
 fellow-man even when the benefaction is a deprivation of in- 
 terest to one's self. Kant grants that being a feeling, respect 
 cannot give rise to the idea of duty, which is necessary to 
 moral experience ; in Hutcheson's case, duty is done away 
 with as Moral Sense is a faculty immediately leading men to 
 love the good fcr its own sake. Reverence is known a priori, 
 but only as an effect, being involuntarily produced by a con- 
 ception of the moral law ; Moral Sense, on the other hand, 
 is regarded as an implanted faculty of perceiving immediately 
 the goodness of an act. 
 
 The Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason 
 
 The Dialectic of practical reason arises from a controversy 
 as to the object of the will. The practical reason must have 
 an object on which to act, but must not be determined 
 thereby. The proper and only moral object is the Good. 
 The time has now come to define the Good, and it is in doing 
 so that reason falls into controversy ; for practical reason 
 (the will) is an element of the faculty of desire, whose object 
 is happiness. The end of the will, considered as reason, is 
 virtue. In deciding on the constituents of the true moral 
 object, we must decide on the relation of these two elements, 
 Virtue and Happiness. 
 
 According to Stoic doctrine, virtue is its own reward. 
 This may mean either one of two things: that happiness is 
 not a state worthy of man, he should be above trying to be 
 happy; or else that happiness is included in the very notion 
 of virtue, and that one may test his happiness by this, that if 
 he is virtuous, he is certain to be happy ; if he is not virtuous, 
 his happiness is a delusion. Kant denies both of these the- 
 ses, and his position differs from the Stoic's radically in this, 
 that he denies positively that one can be moral and at the same 
 time seek either virtue or happiness. His Ethics is properly 
 
57] ELEMENTS OF KANT'S ETHICS 57 
 
 a denial of both Stoic and Epicurean doctrine, and the reason 
 he aimed his remarkable assault against the latter only Was 
 not chiefly his hatred of hedonism, but because in his day 
 no other end but happiness was dwelt upon as of value ; no 
 one thought of determining himself by the amount of virtue 
 to be gained. He wished to defend virtue by denying that 
 it or anything else was a moral end ; by maintaining that 
 Ethics is concerned with purpose, not with ends. 
 
 When we take these facts into consideration we understand 
 Kant's position in the Dialectic much more clearly. His 
 attack on pleasure in the Analytic included in its range vir- 
 tue also, in so far as they are both determining principles of 
 the will ; as anything else he had attacked neither pleasure 
 nor virtue. When, therefore, he speaks of the Good as the 
 object of practical reason, he does not mean the end which 
 one ought to seek, but that which inevitably follows on obedi- 
 ence to the law. 
 
 Now every one acknowledges that true obedience to the 
 law brings virtue ; and the Stoics alleged that consciousness 
 of its attainment is happiness. Kant's conception of the re- 
 lation of reason and sense forbids his taking this view ; virtue 
 in his opinion does not include happiness any more than 
 happiness includes virtue. Nevertheless he is not ready in 
 ascetic fashion to renounce happiness, but, on the contrary, 
 asserts that happines is a true element of the Summum 
 Bonum. 
 
 Virtue is a good, the highest (summum) good. But 
 summum is used in two senses : it may denote the condition 
 which is itself unconditioned (supreme) ; or, the whole 
 which is not part of a greater whole of the same kind (per- 
 fect). Virtue is the supreme good; but in the real summum 
 bonum, the perfect good, reason demands that happiness be 
 included. Virtue is not alone " the object of the desires of 
 rational finite beings ; for this requires happiness also, and 
 
58 THE FORMAL AND MATERIAL Y?% 
 
 that not merely in the partial eyes of the person who makes 
 himself an end, but even in the judgment of an impartial 
 reason." " The reason here spoken of is not the reason pre- 
 viously conceived as opposed to sense ; it is reason from the 
 point of view of the organic unity of the individual demand- 
 ing that the sensible nature be not excluded from the moral 
 world, but that a synthesis, a causal nexus, be made between 
 the objects of the natural and the rational man, between hap- 
 piness and virtue. 
 
 The siimmnm bonum, according to the a priori cognition 
 of reason, contains both virtue and happiness. As Kant has 
 denied the Stoics' conception of the relation between them, 
 (which was analytic), and as their connection is cognized a 
 priori, it must be synthetic, one of cause and effect. Herein 
 lies the dilemma: either the desire for happiness is the mo- 
 tive to maxims of virtue, or maxims of virtue are the efficient 
 cause of happiness. The first thesis is impossible because it 
 contradicts the conclusion of the Analytic that a will which 
 finds its maxims in the desire for happiness is not moral. A 
 desire for happiness may produce good deeds (that is, deeds 
 having the same effect as though prompted by Good Will) 
 but never a virtuous mind. But on the other hand we do not 
 ordinarily conceive of happiness as a result of good princi- 
 ples, but of natural causes acting on the organism without 
 reference to the disposition of the will, or the state of one's 
 mind. Nevertheless — and thus the antinomy is solved — this 
 proposition (that virtue produces happiness), is false only 
 when virtue is considered as a form of causality in the sensi- 
 ble world. But when we consider a rational being as cause 
 in the noumenal world, it becomes possible to think of him 
 as connected with happiness, as effect in the phenomenal 
 world ; not immediately, but through the power and good- 
 ness of God. The happiness thus produced is naturally not 
 the same as that resulting from indulging the inclinations, 
 
59] ELEMENTS OF KANT'S ETHICS $g 
 
 inasmuch as it has no physical cause. It is " the negative 
 satisfaction in one's existence" called self -contentment ;^ and 
 in it the dialectic establishes as possible a natural and neces- 
 sary connection between the consciousness of morality and 
 the expectation of a proportionate happiness as its result. 46 
 
 We have already found a defence of Kant in his intro- 
 duction of happiness into Ethics in the fact that his attack 
 on it was against it merely as a determining principle of the 
 will. He saw plainly that a pure morality, by which man 
 would accomplish his best, must contain no intimation of 
 pleasure to be gained by one's attainments ; for almost in- 
 evitably one will allow himself to be motived by desire for 
 an object, and the morality of character will be lost. The 
 law, therefore, must make no promise of pleasure to be 
 gained by obedience. On the other hand, Ethics is a 
 science of Ends, and must in this capacity treat of pleasure ; 
 it is no inconsistency to find it causally connected as a result 
 with morality. 
 
 Nevertheless there is an inconsistency in Kant's present 
 point of view, namely, in treating happiness as a moral good 
 at all. This may be taken in two ways : he meant to deny 
 it to be a moral good only when its maxims are taken as a 
 determining principle of the will. There is nothing, how- 
 ever, that permits us to make this supposition ; it is contrary 
 to his whole dualistic standpoint. Or else it was, as men- 
 tioned before, a conquest over his dualism in favor of the 
 organic unity of man. In this case — though its logic is 
 undoubtedly weak — it seems to me he can be forgiven for 
 the more common-sense view of things. Moreover it is an 
 inconsistency to introduce even virtue into his system as an 
 object ; it may be a result, but if Duty commands uncondi- 
 tionally not even virtue can be brought in as object, unless 
 it be identified with Duty. To do this is the intention of the 
 second formula of the categorical imperative. But in con- 
 
60 THE FORMAL AND MA FERIAL [6 
 
 sidering the summutn bonum Kant probably had in mind too 
 strongly the Good as thought by the Greeks (a perfecting 
 of the whole man) to remember it as merely an attribute of 
 volitions. 
 
 An object of the will is a necessary presupposition, but the 
 moment we define this object as " the Good" we have differ- 
 entiated it and the resulting concept is material. When out 
 of the empty concept of Good we derive one which is sum- 
 mum bonum, we have a matter of which the former concept 
 is the form ; and this matter in turn is form to the two 
 material concepts of Perfection and Happiness. This is the 
 course Kant takes, and we thus have a progression indefi- 
 nitely from formal to material, viz : 
 
 FORM 
 
 Object of the Will 
 
 the GOOD 
 
 Sumtnum Bonum 
 
 Perfection Happiness 
 
 Physical, Moral, &c, &c. Physical, Moral, &c, &c. 
 
 MATTER. 
 
 Here matter and form are used in the logical meaning; 
 and it was by such a progression from indefinite to definite 
 running through his several works that Kant sought to get a 
 content to his formal principle. (He died before he got it.) 
 
 Kant's conception of the summum bonum as a necessary 
 result of a morally-determined volition demanded that one's 
 own happiness be included in it. 47 This, however, was con- 
 trary to his notion of duty (the summum bonum' s realization 
 being such), and in the metaphysic of Ethics he concluded 
 
6 1 ] ELEMENTS OF KANT y S E THICS 6 x 
 
 that one ought to seek every one else's happiness, but not 
 his own. 48 
 
 From the necessity of realizing the siimmum bonum and 
 the impossibility of doing so in this life, Kant deduces the 
 fact of Immortality. From the necessity for a cause adequate 
 to reward perfect Virtue with perfect happiness, he arrives at 
 a belief in the existence of God. Of his conception of God 
 and Immortality he gives but little hint; they are both a 
 priori Ideas, necessary to the realization of the snmmum 
 bonum but not to the existence of morality, as is Freedom. 
 The belief in immortality on this ground has become a part 
 of the religious consciousness of the day, at least of the part 
 of it called the most "advanced." The principle contained 
 therein is probably the philosophic basis on which arose a 
 belief in the existence of a Purgatory — certainly the most 
 philosophic (when cleared of its superstitions) of current 
 dogmas of the Next World. Of the argument for the exist- 
 ence of God not much notice need be taken. It would have 
 no weight whatever, I am assured, did we not have other 
 foundation for that belief. These Ideas, as such (although 
 not categories, as is Freedom), might have been shown to 
 be functional activities of the understanding ; that is, con- 
 ceptions which in one form or another we cannot help thinking. 
 But for freedom there is found a moral necessity, and Kant 
 seeks for one for each of these two Ideas. That he has 
 found it for a belief in God I do not think. Certainly a re- 
 ligion such as he evolves from this belief, which looks upon 
 moral laws as divine commands solely because it is found that 
 God can dispense happiness as a reward, is as ignoble as any 
 egoistic theory of morals ; and this conclusion is the only 
 one I can reach, although he endeavors to show that under 
 this religion one can still be determined by the moral law 
 alone. 49 
 
 1 Abbott, p. 146. 2 Ibid., p. 101. s Ibid., p. 361, et seq. * Epictetus. 
 
62 THE FORMAL AXD MATERIAL [6 2 
 
 9 1 would not belittle Stoicism; but have stated its position as it appears to one 
 who considers it as doctrine, separately from the appreciation of its upholders. 
 For the truth is that Stoicism is the men who live it. Viewed from the standpoint 
 of them, its empty forms become filled to overflowing with awe-inspiring person- 
 ality and need no other content. 
 
 6 Abbott, p. 52. 7 Ibid., p. 107. 8 Ibid., p. 108. 
 
 v Ibid., p. 114. 10 Ibid., p. 122. " Ibid., p. 123. 
 
 12 Ibid., p. 129. 13 Selby-Bigge : British Moralists, p. 74. 
 
 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., p. 94. i6 Abbott, p. 1 30. 
 
 17 Ibid., p. 297. 18 Ibid., p. 123. 
 
 19 "The conception of the summum bonum as a whole . . . includes my own 
 happiness, yet it is not this that is the determining principle of the will which is 
 enjoined to promote the summum bonum, but the moral law." {Abbott, p. 227.) 
 And the same thing is observed again, in almost the same passage, viz., p. 224. 
 
 20 Abbott, p. 67. 21 Ibid., p. 137. 
 
 22 SempWs Translation, 3d Edition, p. 299. » Abbott, p. 67. 
 
 **Ibid., pp. 182-201. KIbid., p. 129. 26 Ibid., p 296. 
 
 27 Nevertheless the object of practical reason as treated of in this chapter, is not 
 the Ideal but actions as called good, bad or indifferent in actual experience. The 
 object as Ideal is treated under the head of the summum bonum. 
 
 ™ Abbott, p. 153, ™Ibid., p. 227. ™ Ibid., p. 160. 
 
 81 Ibid., p. 160. 32 Ibid., p. 161. 83 Ibid., p. 45. 
 
 31 Ibid., p. 164. 35 Ibid, p. 165. 36 Ibid., p. 168. 
 
 ^ Ibid., p. 54; supra, p. 25. 38 Ibid., p. 17. 39 Ibid., p. 169. 
 
 40 Ibid., p. 174. Compare with pages 278, 279. 
 
 41 Ibid., p. 175. K "- Ibid., p. 180. « Ibid., p. 182. 
 "Ibid., p. 206. 45 Ibid., p. 214. "Ibid., p. 215. 
 47 Ibid., p. 227 ** Ibid., p. 296. * Ibid., p. 226. 
 
IV 
 
 THE METAPHYSIC OF ETHICS 
 
 " Every volition must have an object, and therefore, a 
 matter," is Kant's declaration in the Critique; 1 and as voli- 
 tion is the psychological subject of Ethics, there must ac- 
 cordingly be an Ethics of Ends. The categorical imperative, 
 according to the form of which one must will in order to be 
 moral, " is not concerned with the matter of the action, its 
 intended result" 2 In the chapter on the Object of Practical 
 Reason, however, we found that there is an end which can 
 conform to the imperative, namely, the realization of the 
 Good. In what this realization will consist is the subject of 
 investigation in the Doctrines of Virtue (Tugendlehre). In 
 so far, therefore, this treatise is on the matter of Ethics, and 
 is a continuation of the chapter on the object of practical 
 reason : ** If I am bound to make something which lies in the 
 notions of practical reason an end to myself, and therefore 
 besides the formal determining principle of the elective will 
 (as contained in law), to have already a material principle, 
 an end which can be opposed to the end derived from sen- 
 sible impulses : then this gives the notion of an end which is 
 itself a duty." 3 This matter, however, is still an empty a 
 priori form (conception) of the reason, and any categorical 
 commanding its realization must be subject to the criticism 
 attaching to every universal form, that it may be formally 
 consistent and not be materially (actually)* right. 
 
 In considering the matter of morality JKant divides his 
 subject (Morals) into two parts, Jurisprudence and Ethics J 
 63 [63 ' 
 
64] ELEMENTS OF KANT'S ETHICS 64 
 
 (Rechtslehre and Tugendlehre). The former is entirely 
 formal, and pays no regard to ends. (The latter considers 
 ends, but only such as are also virtues\ It would seem from 
 this fact that Jurisprudence is a purer doctrine of morality 
 than Ethics; but the contrary is true because (like civil law 
 generally) Jurisprudence places the spring m something else 
 than the moral law (e. g., fear of imprisonment). 4 Conse- 
 quently, Jurisprudence requires only external conformity to 
 the law, legality or morality of conduct //Ethics demands 
 the internal morality of character, or action from love of the 
 law. Ethics commands "internal actions," and external 
 actions only when they are required by the internal law of 
 dut* 
 
 (Ethics considers two ends which are duties : one's own 
 perfection and others' happiness.} We cannot reverse these 
 and make others' perfection or our own happiness an end. 
 There are two sorts of perfection : ( 1 ) the totality of char- 
 acteristics which constitute a Thing (material perfection) ; 
 (2) teleological perfection in the performance of an Act 
 (formal perfection). 6 The latter is the perfection which is 
 a duty. It is the highest reach of the endeavor to overcome 
 the passions, and consequently is cultivation of the will, or 
 moral disposition. \ Kant's conception of the will is such that 
 it does not allow him to say that one being can make the 
 cultivation of another's will his end) Nevertheless another 
 can assist very materially in attaining the desired end ; else 
 there would be no need of parents guarding their children 
 from contaminating circumstances or of teaching them les- 
 sons of virtue. 
 
 In discussing the question of one's own harjriinesg, it will 
 be noticed (Kant does not prove that it is wrong to seek it, 
 but merely says that it is useless to discuss it, because each 
 one of us is already and inevitably seeking it.! He really 
 does not discuss it as a duty at all, as there is no object in 
 
(5 5 ] ELEMENTS OF KANT'S ETHICS 65 
 
 telling men it is their duty to do that which they are already 
 doing for the pleasure found in it. If, therefore, we change 
 our conception of Duty and consider it solely as what one 
 ought to do, without reference to any feeling of reluctance to 
 it, or of pleasure or pain in the doing, we will find the com- 
 mand "Love yourself" to be as formal, a priori and neces- 
 sary as that to love one's neighbor. And this is the more 
 common-sense English view of obligation. 8 
 
 Ethics does not command actions, but gives laws for the 
 maxims of action; 9 it supplies a form by which we may test 
 our maxims to see whether they are moral. In other words, 
 /Ethics dictates not specific acts, but principles. J Jurispru- 
 dence, on the other hand, supplies laws for particular actions. 
 C\s a result, ethical duties are of indeterminate (weiter) obli- 
 gation ; juridical duties are of strict obligation. jEthics gives 
 a law that one shall make his fellow happy, butieaves to his 
 intellect to decide the means thereto. Jurisprudence states 
 a law that commands (or more generally, forbids) that a 
 specific act be performed. 1 ! 
 
 1 Abbott,^. 1 23. % Ibid., p. 33. * Ibid., p. 291. 
 
 * Ibid., p. 275. Kant calls Jurisprudence a doctrine of external freedom; at 
 the same time it admits of a spring other than the law, i. <?., is a heteronomous 
 principle; which is contradictory. 
 
 5 Abbott, p. 296. 6 Ibid., p. 297. 7 Ibid., p. 296. 
 
 8 As a matter of fact, reluctance is probably the commonest and best test of 
 duty, but it is only a test; Kant mistook its ratio cognoscendi for a ratio essendi. 
 
 9 Abbott, p. 299. 
 
 10 Ibid., p. 300. I have treated only of so much of the " Metaphysic " as is 
 found in Abbott's translation. 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 THE elements of the system outlined by Kant may be tab- 
 ulated thus : 
 
 AUTONOMY 
 
 £ 
 
 Form. 
 Absolute Good— The Good Will- 
 Determining Principle of the Will — Duty 
 (which is a form of) — Law, universal 
 and necessary 
 Motive — Reverence for law 
 Fundamental Condition — Free Will 
 God 
 Immortality 
 
 Matter} 
 A particular volition 
 A particular duty (an action) 
 A particular maxim 
 
 Conditions of applicability < 
 
 
 
 
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 This is the system of Autonomy. In applying it in prac- 
 tice one is to choose his maxim according to his sense of 
 66 [66 
 
67] ELEMENTS OF KANT'S ETHICS 6y 
 
 duty (#. ^., the idea of law in general) ; if it can serve as a 
 universal law, the volition and the resulting action are good 
 in themselves. The difference between this system and all 
 others is that the latter can be reduced to Heteronomy, i. e., 
 in the last analysis to a system in which the principle by 
 which the will is determined is a desire for happiness (a par- 
 ticular). In this system there is no law, and the sole motive 
 is a love of self. Its maxims may or may not conform to the 
 moral law ; they cannot be moral. Man is, in Kant's opinion, 
 under the rule of reason ; his desires need to be restrained 
 by the faculty which can forecast events. On this account 
 all morality takes on the cast of law, and its particular eth- 
 ical form is an unconditioned OUGHT. 
 
 The essential of Heteronomy is not that its principle pro- 
 ceed from without, but from the sensibility. The principal 
 School of this sort in Kant's time was that of the Moral 
 Sense ; of this I have spoken at the beginning of Section III. 
 In the interest of Rationalism Kant attacks this theory, tak- 
 ing as his main thesis that only man's reason, not his sensi- 
 bility, can from its nature, seek the good ; and to uphold this, 
 he denies that a sense can ever determine man to seek any- 
 thing but his own happiness. Such-~an expression as a 
 "Sense of Duty" to him is unintelligible. Kant's whole 
 theory, therefore, is based on the opposition between Reason [^ 
 and Sense. On this account he took as an essential of duty 
 what is probably only a temporary symptom, namely its 
 undesirableness from the standpoint of the sensibility. On 
 the other hand, as he himself notes, his opponents took too 
 little account of the existing conflict between Interest and 
 Duty; Kant magnified it, they minimized it. The fact of 
 lasting value in Kant's theory is that morality is an attribute 
 of character; the important point in the opposing theory is 
 that the ethical conflict is but temporary. 
 
 1 Heteronomy is the name given by Kant to any system in which the matter is 
 elevated to a principle. 
 
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