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general are either material, which presuppose an object of the faculty of desire as the ground of determination, and so are empirical and subjective, or else formal, which presuppose only the idea of law, and hence are rational and objective. All material practical principles as such fall under the general principle of self-love, or private happiness, - they place the determining principle of the will in the lower desires, so that, if there were no purely formal laws of the will adequate to determine it, we could not have any higher desire at all. On the other hand, since the bare form of the law is the object of reason only, the will, which is determined by the merely formal practical principle, is independent of natural phenomena and their law, the law of causality, — i. e., is a perfectly free will. The fundamental law of such a will must be, Act so that the maxim of thy will can always at the same time hold good as a principle of universal legislation. (This law is a [the] "categorical imperative," — unconditional command.) Pure reason, that is to say, is practical of itself alone,—gives itself its law. This principle, the principle of the autonomy of the will, is the sole principle of moral laws. Heteronomy of the will -the being ruled by something foreign to itself— cannot be the basis of any obligation, but is, on the contrary, opposed to the principle thereof and to the morality of the will. The autonomy of the will, as distinguished from the mere independence of natural law, is positive, as distinguished from negative, freedom. The moral law proves that we belong to a supersensible as well as a sensible world, and permits us to view nature, in spite of its mechanism, as a supersensible system, i. e., a system having the determining principle of its causality solely in the pure faculty of reason.

The Notion of an Object of Pure Practical Reason. The only objects of the practical reason are, the good and the evil, the former being always an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason, the latter an object necessarily shunned, according to a principle of reason. Whether or not any action which is possible to us in

the world of sense comes under the rule of reason which determines the good and the evil, is a question to be decided by the practical judgment. And instead of a schema, as in the case of the sensibility, we have the law as exhibited in concreto in objects of the senses: this law, thus exhibited, we may call a Type of the moral law. The rule of judgment according to laws of pure practical reason is this Ask yourself whether, if the action you propose were to take place by a law of the system of nature of which you were yourself a part, you could regard it as possible by your will. It is therefore allowable to use the system of the world of sense as the type of a supersensible system of things, provided I do not transfer to the latter the perceptions and what depends on them, but merely refer to it the form of law in general, laws as such, being identical, no matter from what they derive their determining principles.

The Motives of Pure Practical Reason. - An action possesses legality only, and not morality, if, though it takes place according to the moral law, it be determined by a mere feeling of whatever kind. Pure practical reason does not aim to destroy self-love, but merely to make it rational: it does "strike down" self-conceit, in order to make room for respect for the moral law as such. This is indeed a feeling, but a feeling having a purely intellectual cause, the only feeling which we know quite a priori, and the necessity of which we can perceive. Through this feeling the moral law becomes a subjective determining principle,

a real material principle. Respect for the moral law is, however, not so much a motive to morality as morality itself subjectively considered as a motive. It is to be observed that respect for the moral law as having to do with sensibility cannot be attributed to a Supreme Being, but to finite beings as such (the feeling of obligation is merely a concomitant of the fact that with the noumenal nature in man is joined a phenomenal). The (apparent) contradiction between freedom and the mechanism of nature in one and the same action is removed by the

consideration that, while phenomenally one's acts take place in accordance with natural law, they cannot noumenally or morally be regarded as his except in so far as they are rationally understood and adopted as his, or are referred to laws springing from his consciousness of himself as a thing in himself. A further difficulty in conceiving the combination of freedom with the mechanism of nature in a being belonging to the world of sense a difficulty arising from the idea of God as the cause of the existence of substance is resolved as follows: God does not create phenomena, and created noumena, as having a principle distinct from that of phenomena, are free as regards them.

Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason. - Reason in its practical use, as in its speculative, has a dialectic, since it seeks to discover the unconditioned for the practically conditioned. And though it possesses in the moral law the determining principle of the will, it seeks an unconditioned in a highest object of pure practical reason, a Summum Bonum. Virtue is doubtless the supreme condition that can appear to us as desirable, and consequently of all our pursuit of happiness, and therefore the supreme good. But it does not follow that it is the whole and perfect good as the object of the desires of rational finite beings; for this requires happiness also, and that not merely in the partial eyes of the person who makes himself an end, but even in the judgment of an impartial reason, which regards persons in general as ends in themselves. Now, inasmuch as virtue and happiness together constitute the possession of the summum bonum in a person, and the distribution of happiness in exact proportion to morality (which is the worth of the person and his worthiness to be happy) constitutes the summum bonum of the possible world; hence this summum bonum expresses the whole, the perfect good, in which, however, virtue as the condition is always the supreme good, since it has no condition above it: whereas happiness, while it is pleasant to the possessor of it, is not in itself absolutely and in all respects good, but always presup

poses morally right behavior as its condition. The antinomy of practical reason, resulting from the connection of virtue and happiness, is as follows: Either the desire of happiness must be the motive to maxims of virtue, or the maxim of virtue must be the efficient cause of happiness. The first is absolutely impossible, because maxims which place the determining principle of the will in the desire of personal happiness, are not moral at all, and no virtue can be founded on them. The second also is false, because the practical connection of causes and effects in the world as the result of the determination of the will does not depend upon the moral disposition of the will, but on the knowledge of the laws of nature and the physical power to use them for one's purposes. The solution of the antinomy is contained in the possibility that morality of mind should have a connection as cause with happiness (as an effect in the sensible world), if not immediate, yet mediate (viz., through an intelligent author of nature), and moreover necessary. Necessary to the realization of the summum bonum in the world is a perfect accordance of the mind with the moral law- holiness = worthiness to be happy), but holiness can be attained by a rational sensible being only in a progressus in infinitum, which presupposes endless duration of the existence and personality of the same rational being (which is called the immortality of the soul). The summum bonum, then, practically is only possible on the supposition of the immortality of the soul: consequently immortality, being inseparably connected with the moral law, is a Postulate of pure practical reason (by which is meant a theoretical proposition not demonstrable as such, but yet an inseparable result of an unconditioned a priori practical law). The moral law must also lead to the supposition of the existence of a cause adequate to the production of happiness (as the second element of the summum bonum), i. e., to the postulation of the existence of God as the necessary condition of the possibility of the summum bonum. Happiness, being the condition of a rational being in the world with whom

everything goes according to his wish and will, depends on the harmony of physical nature with his whole end, and likewise with the essential determining principle of his will. There is in the moral law itself not the least ground for connection between morality and proportionate happiness. Such connection, however, is postulated by the summum bonum. Accordingly, the existence of a cause of all nature distinct from nature itself and containing the principle of this connection is also postulated. This supreme cause must contain the principle of the harmony of nature, not merely with a law of the will of rational beings, but with the conception of this law in so far as they make it the supreme determining principle of the will, and consequently not merely with the form of morals, but with their morality as their motive; that is, with their moral character. Therefore the summum bonum is possible in the world only on the supposition of a supreme nature having a causality corresponding to moral character. A being capable of acting on the conception of law is an intelligence (a rational being), and the causality of such a being according to this conception of laws is his will; therefore the supreme cause of nature, which must be presupposed as the condition of the summum bonum, is a being which is the cause of nature by intelligence and will, consequently its author, i. e., God. The postulates of the practical reason, freedom, immortality, and God, — while they do not extend our speculative knowledge, give objective reality to the ideas of speculative reason in general, and give it a right to notions, the possibility of which it could not otherwise venture to affirm. Nothing is added to the content of the notion of duty as such by these postulates. It alone binds me in the most perfect manner to act in unconditional conformity to the law.

Methodology of Pure Practical Reason. - By the methodology of the pure practical reason is to be understood the "mode in which we can give the laws of pure practical reason access to the human mind and influence on its maxims,