in his life.[1] It is the link which binds him to the Absolute – "the voice of God in the soul." This categorical imperative commands the willing of itself as universal law – the realization of itself in experience. This realization consists in the establishment of the Summum Bonum as the union of perfection and happiness.
A comparison of these conclusions with those of the utility principle, shows that the difference lies not in the results, but in the causes – in the principles adduced as motives to moral action and the grounds of moral judgment. The lives of Kantian and utilitarian moralists would show no difference, though the one laid emphasis on the end, the other on the motive, since the state of mind which the Kantian termed perfection would be most likely to produce the greatest happiness. The ideal of what should be is largely drawn from what is. The moral phenomena of any age are the same for all: they are the common data from which all principles are formed; hence they themselves are not matters of controversy, but the laws adduced to explain them.
Kant is opposed to utility, not as an end of conduct, but as the motive to conduct. Utility places all morality in the outward manifestation. Kant seeks to supplement this by the introduction of the inner spring – by showing the noumenal self as the subject of moral imputation. He would seek a law which shall command the transition from the individual to the universal – which shall enable the subject to transcend the limits of his private interests, and find his true self in the promotion of the common good. This can only be done by virtue of an universal element in the individual, which Kant finds in the practical reason. A system, on the contrary, which makes the standard of morality an end external to the subject, or else an end limited to the subject, cannot, on the one hand, bind the subject at all, or, on the other, oblige him to pass beyond his own interests. If the greatest happiness of the greatest number be the sole principle of morality, what power is there which can compel man to seek it? What
- ↑ VIII, 254.
