duty is always in question, and its law is never to act from inclination. Still Kant says that "it may even, in certain respects, be a duty to provide for happiness."[1] This must mean that there is a real organic relation between the two, and, however much we take it as a statement of fact, the question of Kant's right to such a conclusion still remains. For Kant duty means constraint. We stand under a discipline of reason, and we must not "pretend with fanciful pride to set ourselves above the thought of duty, like volunteers, and, as if we were independent of the command to want to do of our own good pleasure what we think we need no command to do."[2] That is to say, we must not, under the military rule of reason, volunteer to do that which reason commands. Strange to say, however, such an harmonious coöperation of desire and reason is Kant's very ideal of moral perfection, or 'holiness.'[3] To suppose such a goal attainable is moral fanaticism.[4] Yet, whether attainable or not, it should follow that it is our chief duty, the whole business of our lives as moral agents, to strive to train our desires into conformity with reason, so that we may become more and more like the Deity. But Kant is not entitled to such a conclusion, since moral action must not and cannot be from desire, and this would lead to the elimination, rather than the training, of desire. We must set our back to the goal of moral perfection, rather than struggle toward it.
For Butler, on the other hand, this is the legitimate aim of our efforts. For him, too, the ideal is unattainable in this life, since human nature can never be perfected here. Still the guidance of inclination in the way of reason, the training of desire to rest in its proper end, and the following of desire when thus instructed by reason, is our moral duty. On Butler's principles this conclusion is consistent, because sensibility was not found to be in itself irrational, action from desire and from duty were never set up in abstract opposition, and the sphere of prudence was never precluded from that of morality.
In concluding this discussion, it is necessary to emphasize the
