GORICAL IMPERATIVE" AND ITS IMPLICATIONS.

 Kant s inten

tions were good. He wished to defend man s fundamental

religious and moral beliefs against the attacks made upon them

in the name of science. The aim of the Critique of Practical

Reason was to show up the error of identifying duty with self-

interest after the manner of the British moralists ; to vindicate

the real existence of a moral law, or dictate of duty, absolute in

character ad universal in its authority ; to show, consistently

with the principles and conclusions of the Critique of Pure

Reason, that the certitude of our belief in God, freedom and

immortality, is sufficiently grounded in the subjective, practical

human need of such belief as necessitated by the dictate of the

practical reason interpreting the implications of the imperative

of duty revealed in our moral conscience ; that the primacy of

this practical dictate, or need of the will to believe, its supremacy

in transcending the limits of the mere knowledge-verdicts of the

speculative reason, reveals this practical need or dictate as the

subjectively adequate and only possible ultimate basis of human

certitude in realities of the suprasensible, moral and religious

order.

If, therefore, we can show that Kant s method of vindicating

the reality of a moral obligation superior to all self-interest is a

failure ; that such obligation cannot be grounded on any need

or dictate of our nature so long as the speculative reason is de

barred from seeking or finding objective grounds for it ; that he

cannot validly or consistently derive from such a dictate of duty

the three conclusions proposed for our belief concerning God,

freedom and immortality ; and finally, that his two Critiques

are, in fact if not in intention, mutually inconsistent and contra

dictory, that the conflict between them is inevitable, essential,

fundamental, it will be sufficiently clear that so far from

achieving what he wished and intended, his effort to defend

human certitude only leads once more to the wilderness of

scepticism.

I. The deduction of the categorical imperative as pure universal

form or law of moral conduct fails to establish a real and effective

moral obligation. Kant s moral dogmatism is avowedly con

cerned with existing realities, with the moral conduct of actual

KANT S MORAL DO GMA TISM 33 1

men : its aim is to establish an effective moral obligation. Its

method precludes its doing so. And for this reason : from ab

stract judgments of the ideal order it is impossible to deduce an

affirmation concerning an existence. But the categorical im

perative is an abstract formula of the ideal order. Therefore the

actual existence of an effective moral obligation (and of its three

ontological conditions) cannot be deduced from the categorical

imperative. 1

What Kant expresses in such a variety of formulae as the

moral law is not an object of actual experience, but an abstrac

tion. Examine the formulas given above. They are all abstract

and universal. Kant has confused the abstract formulation of cer

tain conditions of morality with proof or vindication of the fact of

moral obligation. We need not examine those conditions on

their merits. The stoic rigorism of some of them is not above

criticism. But such as they are, where are they to be found ?

Disinterestedness, for example, as a condition of moral conduct,

where is it realized ? Where, if not in the concrete acts of

men s individual wills ? And so of the other veritable conditions

of morality. But the acts of the will are elicited in view of an

end: without an end in view there would be no "motive" of

action, and consequently no action. If the end is in conformity

with man s rational nature the act is morally good ; otherwise it

is not. From such concrete data, embodied in concrete moral

acts, reason abstracts the conditions essential for a morally good

act, and then erects them into a universal norm or standard or

criterion of moral acts. But the abstract formulation of such a

standard or rule is not the proof of a real and effective moral

obligation. The conditions or circumstances by the presence of

which the existence of a duty or obligation are revealed to us do

not constitute the real and effective obligation. To be morally

obliged or bound in duty and to act accordingly, implies this :

that we wish an end absolutely, that we see a definite act to be

necessary for the realization of this end, and that we freely will

or elicit to perform the act as a means to the end. But, then,

the question at once arises : Is there any end which imposes itself

absolutely on the will ? And if so, what is it ? It is for man s

intelligence, for his reason, to find out. And so we pass from the

1 The attempt to make such an inference is compared by Taine to an attempt to

hang one s hat on the painted image of a nail in the wall. Cf. MERCIER, op. cit.,

86, pp. 191-2.

332 THROR V OF KNO WLEDGR

domain of action to that of speculation, from the dictate of duty

by the practical reason to the analysis of this dictate by the specu

lative reason. And, contrary to Kant s contention, the primacy

inevitably passes from the former to the latter.

Nor does Kant s actual procedure fail to betray an uncon

scious indication of this inevitable denouement. " So act that

human nature be never a means, but always an end." In other

words: "Subordinate your personal interest to the good of

humanity, and will this always as supreme end ". But why

should I ? Is the good of humanity the supreme end of life,

the supreme determinant of my conduct ? A question which it

is obviously the task of the speculative reason or intellect to

answer by rational reflection and investigation.

Again, look at Kant s account of the categorical imperative.

Man s moral conscience, it is alleged, reveals an absolute or cate

gorical imperative which must be interpreted as the dictate of

an autonomous will. But the dictate of duty de facto revealed

by introspection is not revealed, and cannot be interpreted, as

imposed autonomously by the will or practical reason. An

"autonomous" will is one that should necessarily will its own

perfection, rinding in itself the adequate object of its volition,

wholly uninfluenced by any end or object or motive outside or

extrinsic to itself. But only the Will that is Divine, Infinite,

All-Perfect, can will in this way. The will of the human indivi

dual is not thus self-moved or self-sufficient. Nor can it will in

vacua, as it were. It must will this or that or the other concrete

end presented to it by the intellect as a good : only by such good,

as " motive," can it be solicited or " moved " from its state of

indetermination to elicit any definite, specific act of volition.

And such is the law of every will that is contingent and finite.

Only the Will that is I m perfectible, All-Perfect, Infinite, " Actus

Purus," can elicit a self-originated volition, an absolute begin

ning of activity. Thus Kant s doctrine of the human will as

autonomous really deifies the human will.

II. Kan? s postulates of the Practical Reason cannot be valid I y

or consistently deduced from the categorical imperative or dictate

of moral duty.

A. And first as to his doctrine of freedom. How can he

speak of free acts of man after concluding in the Critique of Pure

Reason that whatever happens in space and time is ruled by

the absolute determinism of phenomenal antecedents according

KANT S MORAL DOGMATISM 333

to the law of physical causation ? How can determinism pre

vail universally in the world of space and time if a free principle,

residing in the noumenal domain of the real human will, can

intervene in the flow of physical events and break their physically

determined continuity ? Either there is no real relation between

the two domains, the noumenal domain of free volitional action

and the phenomenal domain of physical determinism, or there

is such relation. If there is none such, if free volition is con

fined to the noumenal world, how can it serve to explain the

actual moral conduct of men in the actual world of space and

time ? When Kant argues, and rightly, that " you must " im

plies "you can," it is because he sees in any such definite, con

crete human act as e.g. telling the truth at one s own expense,

an exercise of moral conduct, and infers as a necessary implica

tion of this act fa& freedom of the man to tell the truth rather

than lie. But this is bringing down freedom from the noumenal

domain and admitting its real relation, its real contact, with

man s actions in the physical domain of space and time. And

what now becomes of the universal determinism ? Kant, as

we have seen already, tried to face this difficulty. 1 But how ?

By taking the soul in two senses, as the noumenal Ego and as

the phenomenal Ego, as a noumenal reality for belief and as a

phenomenal object for knowledge. By recognition of this dis

tinction, he says, "we can without any contradiction think of the

same will when phenomenal (in visible actions) as necessarily

conforming to the law of nature, and so far, not free, and yet,

on the other hand, when belonging to a thing by itself, as

not subject to that law of nature, and therefore free"? But

how " without any contradiction " ? Is the contradiction not

palpable ? Kant denies that there is any contradiction ; and

his reason for the denial is that while the speculative reason can

know the will only as phenomenal (and not free), it can think the

will as noumenal (and free), and therefore cannot deny the

possibility of free will as noumenal, while the practical reason

demands free will as a noumenon and justifies our belief "in it as

really free : to which he would add the further plea that con

tradiction can be only between conflicting "knowledges," or

conflicting " beliefs," but is unintelligible and impossible as be

tween any "knowledge" and any "belief," inasmuch as these

*C/. vol. i., 54, p. 193.

3 Critique (Pref. to and edit.), p. 699 quoted vol. i,, ibid.

334 THEOR Y OF KNO W LEDGE

are wholly separate and mutually exclusive domains of human

experience. But all this is of no avail. For firstly, on his own

theory he ought to judge human free will to be an impossibility.

The human will, on his own admission, is the will that conditions

the moral acts of men, acts that are performed in the physical

world of space and time. He might, indeed, judge to be

possible a world of unknown and unknowable beings endowed

with free will, beings wholly apart from the world of human

experience. But how can he, without inevitable contradiction,

judge free will to be possible and operative in the actual moral

conduct of human beings existing and acting in this world of

human experience, if he holds all the events in this world, in

cluding the moral acts of men, to be rigidly and adequately

determined by their physical or phenomenal antecedents ? And

secondly, is there in man only one Ego, one will, considered

under two different aspects? 1 If so, the contradiction is there:

such Ego or will cannot be both free and not free : nor will it

remove the contradiction, or satisfy us as rational beings, to be

told that we only know the will as not free, but can transcend this

knowledge by believing the will to be free, and console ourselves

with the thought that it is belief, not knowledge, that attains to the

reality of things. 2 Or is it that there are two real and really

distinct domains of reality, the one including the noumenal Ego

or will, and the other including the visible universe of men and

things? If this were so, and if the former had no influence on

or in the latter, then it is not about the former that reasonable

men will trouble themselves, but about the actual men and things

of human experience. 3 While if the noumenal (free) will has a

real influence on the flow of events in the phenomenal universe

the contradiction of maintaining this universe to be ruled by

rigid determinism remains inevitable.

B. Kant s attempt to infer the immortality of the soul from

the dictate of moral duty is inconsistent with his own principles.

His argument comes to this, that although morally right conduct

is essentially disinterested, and can never be in view of happiness,

nevertheless reflection on the notions of virtue and happiness

shows that there is an evident incompatibility in conceiving

1 Cf. 129, supra, for Kant s erection of phenomena into " secondary " realities.

2 In other words the speculative reason of man will inevitably assert, and rightly

assert, its claim to primacy, to explore all the motives and grounds, whether sub-

ective or objective, of all human beliefs or assents, and to evaluate these accordingly.

3 C/. MAHER, Psychology, chap, xxii., pp. 47^-5.

KANT S MORAL DOGMATISM 335

virtue to be for ever divorced from happiness ; and since they are

often divorced in the present life, where the lot of the just man

is so allied with suffering, there must be a future life where virtue

will have its reward.

But if it were analytically evident, from mere consideration

of the notions, that virtue and unhappiness are incompatible, as

Kant contends, then such analysis should enable us to see that

virtue and happiness are essentially inseparable. But they are

not, as indeed Kant himself admits and experience of life

abundantly proves. If, therefore, the one does involve the other,

the connexion must be proved or made clear synthetically. But

it cannot according to Kant s own principles, for the Critique of

Pure Reason teaches that synthetic judgments are valid only within

the limits of sense experience, while the soul and a future life fall

beyond these limits.

As a matter of fact the belief that virtuous conduct will have

its reward, or ought to have its reward, is not a belief the validity

of which is self-evidently valid. That it will have its reward

requires to be proved. And that it ought to have its reward,

well, perhaps, the persuasion is no more than an illusion, prompted

by the wish that is father to the thought? These difficulties can,

of course, be solved, and the general argument from duty to

immortality defended as valid. But Kant s doctrine concerning

the scope and validity of the judgments that must enter into

such an argument precludes Kant himself from all right to

use it. His claim that the practical reason, being above the

laws that govern the speculative reason, can use the argument

legitimately to ground belief in immortality, we shall examine

below (168).

C. In inferring the existence of God from the categorical

imperative Kant employs the principle of causality inconsistently

with his own teaching as to the limits of the valid application

of this principle. The union of righteousness and happiness in a

perfect and consummated good must, he argues, ultimately take

place. But it can take place only if brought about by a Supreme

Being, a Sovereign Legislator of the moral order, Who wills to

realize the bonum consummatum. Therefore such Supreme Being

exists.

But what can such inference avail, if the principle of causality

is not objectively valid or applicable beyond the domain of

phenomena ?

336 THEOR Y OF KNO W LEDGE

Before considering Kant s claim to the lawfulness of such reasoning in

support of our belief m the postulates of the practical reason, a point which

belongs to the relation between the two Critiques, we may note here a few

other obvious defects in his procedure. From his stoic conception of moral

duty he totally excludes the motive of happiness. Man s desire for happiness

is natural. Moreover the virtuous man deserves, merits happiness, as the

reward of well-doing : even on Kant s admission. Nay, more, a man is

bound to be virtuous, and so to render himself worthy of happiness. And

yet Kant would have it that if a man desires the happiness which he ought by

his conduct to deserve, such desire of his cannot be a morally good act

inasmuch as it is wanting in the essential element of disinterestedness !

The truth of course is that while disinterestedness is a perfection of the moral

act, the full measure of disinterestedness which would exclude all considera

tion of self and all thought of individual well-being is not essential to morally

righteous conduct.

Again, the unquenchable aspirations of man towards an ideal of moral

goodness, beauty, righteousness, above and beyond the satisfactions of

individual interests ; his inborn reverence, respect, admiration for this ideal,

are boldly emphasized in Kant s theory. "Two things," he exclaims,

" fill the soul with admiration and respect, the starry heaven above us and the

moral law within us." This is undeniably so. But then both of them alike

raise problems for the human mind. What is the import or significance of

such feelings ? It is all very well to say : " I wish, I desire, that the moral

order be respected ; I experience an imperative need to respect it ; my nature

impels me to respect it ; the moral dignity of man, the good of humanity, etc.,

demand it". All that only raises a problem (and not quite accurately, thus

expressed), but does not solve it. What right have I to assume a priori that

such needs, impulses, aspirations are not illusory ? How do I know that the

subordination of my personal satisfactions to a dictate of duty or a moral law

is right or reasonable, and not a mere self-deception ? Therefore I must seek

and find, by rational investigation of my own nature and the universe and

what they imply, a rational basis for, and justification of, those moral dictates

in obedience to which I am expected to shape my conduct and direct my life.

And so we find ourselves once more led to the thesis of intellectualism, that

man can attain to a reasoned certitude regarding his spontaneous assents,

whether these be speculative or moral or religious, if, and only if, he can find

for such assents a ground or motive that will be objectively valid under the

scrutiny of reflecting reason. Natural promptings of the will, aspirations of

the heart, impulses of feeling and sentiment, may serve as immediate motives

of spontaneous assents, and as provisional practical guides of conduct ; but

the ultimate ground of human certitude must be approved by reflecting reason,

and with reflecting reason the last word on certitude must ever rest.

 Kant s inten

tions were good. He wished to defend man s fundamental

religious and moral beliefs against the attacks made upon them

in the name of science. The aim of the Critique of Practical

Reason was to show up the error of identifying duty with self-

interest after the manner of the British moralists ; to vindicate

the real existence of a moral law, or dictate of duty, absolute in

character ad universal in its authority ; to show, consistently

with the principles and conclusions of the Critique of Pure

Reason, that the certitude of our belief in God, freedom and

immortality, is sufficiently grounded in the subjective, practical

human need of such belief as necessitated by the dictate of the

practical reason interpreting the implications of the imperative

of duty revealed in our moral conscience ; that the primacy of

this practical dictate, or need of the will to believe, its supremacy

in transcending the limits of the mere knowledge-verdicts of the

speculative reason, reveals this practical need or dictate as the

subjectively adequate and only possible ultimate basis of human

certitude in realities of the suprasensible, moral and religious

order.

If, therefore, we can show that Kant s method of vindicating

the reality of a moral obligation superior to all self-interest is a

failure ; that such obligation cannot be grounded on any need

or dictate of our nature so long as the speculative reason is de

barred from seeking or finding objective grounds for it ; that he

cannot validly or consistently derive from such a dictate of duty

the three conclusions proposed for our belief concerning God,

freedom and immortality ; and finally, that his two Critiques

are, in fact if not in intention, mutually inconsistent and contra

dictory, that the conflict between them is inevitable, essential,

fundamental, it will be sufficiently clear that so far from

achieving what he wished and intended, his effort to defend

human certitude only leads once more to the wilderness of

scepticism.

I. The deduction of the categorical imperative as pure universal

form or law of moral conduct fails to establish a real and effective

moral obligation. Kant s moral dogmatism is avowedly con

cerned with existing realities, with the moral conduct of actual

KANT S MORAL DO GMA TISM 33 1

men : its aim is to establish an effective moral obligation. Its

method precludes its doing so. And for this reason : from ab

stract judgments of the ideal order it is impossible to deduce an

affirmation concerning an existence. But the categorical im

perative is an abstract formula of the ideal order. Therefore the

actual existence of an effective moral obligation (and of its three

ontological conditions) cannot be deduced from the categorical

imperative. 1

What Kant expresses in such a variety of formulae as the

moral law is not an object of actual experience, but an abstrac

tion. Examine the formulas given above. They are all abstract

and universal. Kant has confused the abstract formulation of cer

tain conditions of morality with proof or vindication of the fact of

moral obligation. We need not examine those conditions on

their merits. The stoic rigorism of some of them is not above

criticism. But such as they are, where are they to be found ?

Disinterestedness, for example, as a condition of moral conduct,

where is it realized ? Where, if not in the concrete acts of

men s individual wills ? And so of the other veritable conditions

of morality. But the acts of the will are elicited in view of an

end: without an end in view there would be no "motive" of

action, and consequently no action. If the end is in conformity

with man s rational nature the act is morally good ; otherwise it

is not. From such concrete data, embodied in concrete moral

acts, reason abstracts the conditions essential for a morally good

act, and then erects them into a universal norm or standard or

criterion of moral acts. But the abstract formulation of such a

standard or rule is not the proof of a real and effective moral

obligation. The conditions or circumstances by the presence of

which the existence of a duty or obligation are revealed to us do

not constitute the real and effective obligation. To be morally

obliged or bound in duty and to act accordingly, implies this :

that we wish an end absolutely, that we see a definite act to be

necessary for the realization of this end, and that we freely will

or elicit to perform the act as a means to the end. But, then,

the question at once arises : Is there any end which imposes itself

absolutely on the will ? And if so, what is it ? It is for man s

intelligence, for his reason, to find out. And so we pass from the

1 The attempt to make such an inference is compared by Taine to an attempt to

hang one s hat on the painted image of a nail in the wall. Cf. MERCIER, op. cit.,

86, pp. 191-2.

332 THROR V OF KNO WLEDGR

domain of action to that of speculation, from the dictate of duty

by the practical reason to the analysis of this dictate by the specu

lative reason. And, contrary to Kant s contention, the primacy

inevitably passes from the former to the latter.

Nor does Kant s actual procedure fail to betray an uncon

scious indication of this inevitable denouement. " So act that

human nature be never a means, but always an end." In other

words: "Subordinate your personal interest to the good of

humanity, and will this always as supreme end ". But why

should I ? Is the good of humanity the supreme end of life,

the supreme determinant of my conduct ? A question which it

is obviously the task of the speculative reason or intellect to

answer by rational reflection and investigation.

Again, look at Kant s account of the categorical imperative.

Man s moral conscience, it is alleged, reveals an absolute or cate

gorical imperative which must be interpreted as the dictate of

an autonomous will. But the dictate of duty de facto revealed

by introspection is not revealed, and cannot be interpreted, as

imposed autonomously by the will or practical reason. An

"autonomous" will is one that should necessarily will its own

perfection, rinding in itself the adequate object of its volition,

wholly uninfluenced by any end or object or motive outside or

extrinsic to itself. But only the Will that is Divine, Infinite,

All-Perfect, can will in this way. The will of the human indivi

dual is not thus self-moved or self-sufficient. Nor can it will in

vacua, as it were. It must will this or that or the other concrete

end presented to it by the intellect as a good : only by such good,

as " motive," can it be solicited or " moved " from its state of

indetermination to elicit any definite, specific act of volition.

And such is the law of every will that is contingent and finite.

Only the Will that is I m perfectible, All-Perfect, Infinite, " Actus

Purus," can elicit a self-originated volition, an absolute begin

ning of activity. Thus Kant s doctrine of the human will as

autonomous really deifies the human will.

II. Kan? s postulates of the Practical Reason cannot be valid I y

or consistently deduced from the categorical imperative or dictate

of moral duty.

A. And first as to his doctrine of freedom. How can he

speak of free acts of man after concluding in the Critique of Pure

Reason that whatever happens in space and time is ruled by

the absolute determinism of phenomenal antecedents according

KANT S MORAL DOGMATISM 333

to the law of physical causation ? How can determinism pre

vail universally in the world of space and time if a free principle,

residing in the noumenal domain of the real human will, can

intervene in the flow of physical events and break their physically

determined continuity ? Either there is no real relation between

the two domains, the noumenal domain of free volitional action

and the phenomenal domain of physical determinism, or there

is such relation. If there is none such, if free volition is con

fined to the noumenal world, how can it serve to explain the

actual moral conduct of men in the actual world of space and

time ? When Kant argues, and rightly, that " you must " im

plies "you can," it is because he sees in any such definite, con

crete human act as e.g. telling the truth at one s own expense,

an exercise of moral conduct, and infers as a necessary implica

tion of this act fa& freedom of the man to tell the truth rather

than lie. But this is bringing down freedom from the noumenal

domain and admitting its real relation, its real contact, with

man s actions in the physical domain of space and time. And

what now becomes of the universal determinism ? Kant, as

we have seen already, tried to face this difficulty. 1 But how ?

By taking the soul in two senses, as the noumenal Ego and as

the phenomenal Ego, as a noumenal reality for belief and as a

phenomenal object for knowledge. By recognition of this dis

tinction, he says, "we can without any contradiction think of the

same will when phenomenal (in visible actions) as necessarily

conforming to the law of nature, and so far, not free, and yet,

on the other hand, when belonging to a thing by itself, as

not subject to that law of nature, and therefore free"? But

how " without any contradiction " ? Is the contradiction not

palpable ? Kant denies that there is any contradiction ; and

his reason for the denial is that while the speculative reason can

know the will only as phenomenal (and not free), it can think the

will as noumenal (and free), and therefore cannot deny the

possibility of free will as noumenal, while the practical reason

demands free will as a noumenon and justifies our belief "in it as

really free : to which he would add the further plea that con

tradiction can be only between conflicting "knowledges," or

conflicting " beliefs," but is unintelligible and impossible as be

tween any "knowledge" and any "belief," inasmuch as these

*C/. vol. i., 54, p. 193.

3 Critique (Pref. to and edit.), p. 699 quoted vol. i,, ibid.

334 THEOR Y OF KNO W LEDGE

are wholly separate and mutually exclusive domains of human

experience. But all this is of no avail. For firstly, on his own

theory he ought to judge human free will to be an impossibility.

The human will, on his own admission, is the will that conditions

the moral acts of men, acts that are performed in the physical

world of space and time. He might, indeed, judge to be

possible a world of unknown and unknowable beings endowed

with free will, beings wholly apart from the world of human

experience. But how can he, without inevitable contradiction,

judge free will to be possible and operative in the actual moral

conduct of human beings existing and acting in this world of

human experience, if he holds all the events in this world, in

cluding the moral acts of men, to be rigidly and adequately

determined by their physical or phenomenal antecedents ? And

secondly, is there in man only one Ego, one will, considered

under two different aspects? 1 If so, the contradiction is there:

such Ego or will cannot be both free and not free : nor will it

remove the contradiction, or satisfy us as rational beings, to be

told that we only know the will as not free, but can transcend this

knowledge by believing the will to be free, and console ourselves

with the thought that it is belief, not knowledge, that attains to the

reality of things. 2 Or is it that there are two real and really

distinct domains of reality, the one including the noumenal Ego

or will, and the other including the visible universe of men and

things? If this were so, and if the former had no influence on

or in the latter, then it is not about the former that reasonable

men will trouble themselves, but about the actual men and things

of human experience. 3 While if the noumenal (free) will has a

real influence on the flow of events in the phenomenal universe

the contradiction of maintaining this universe to be ruled by

rigid determinism remains inevitable.

B. Kant s attempt to infer the immortality of the soul from

the dictate of moral duty is inconsistent with his own principles.

His argument comes to this, that although morally right conduct

is essentially disinterested, and can never be in view of happiness,

nevertheless reflection on the notions of virtue and happiness

shows that there is an evident incompatibility in conceiving

1 Cf. 129, supra, for Kant s erection of phenomena into " secondary " realities.

2 In other words the speculative reason of man will inevitably assert, and rightly

assert, its claim to primacy, to explore all the motives and grounds, whether sub-

ective or objective, of all human beliefs or assents, and to evaluate these accordingly.

3 C/. MAHER, Psychology, chap, xxii., pp. 47^-5.

KANT S MORAL DOGMATISM 335

virtue to be for ever divorced from happiness ; and since they are

often divorced in the present life, where the lot of the just man

is so allied with suffering, there must be a future life where virtue

will have its reward.

But if it were analytically evident, from mere consideration

of the notions, that virtue and unhappiness are incompatible, as

Kant contends, then such analysis should enable us to see that

virtue and happiness are essentially inseparable. But they are

not, as indeed Kant himself admits and experience of life

abundantly proves. If, therefore, the one does involve the other,

the connexion must be proved or made clear synthetically. But

it cannot according to Kant s own principles, for the Critique of

Pure Reason teaches that synthetic judgments are valid only within

the limits of sense experience, while the soul and a future life fall

beyond these limits.

As a matter of fact the belief that virtuous conduct will have

its reward, or ought to have its reward, is not a belief the validity

of which is self-evidently valid. That it will have its reward

requires to be proved. And that it ought to have its reward,

well, perhaps, the persuasion is no more than an illusion, prompted

by the wish that is father to the thought? These difficulties can,

of course, be solved, and the general argument from duty to

immortality defended as valid. But Kant s doctrine concerning

the scope and validity of the judgments that must enter into

such an argument precludes Kant himself from all right to

use it. His claim that the practical reason, being above the

laws that govern the speculative reason, can use the argument

legitimately to ground belief in immortality, we shall examine

below (168).

C. In inferring the existence of God from the categorical

imperative Kant employs the principle of causality inconsistently

with his own teaching as to the limits of the valid application

of this principle. The union of righteousness and happiness in a

perfect and consummated good must, he argues, ultimately take

place. But it can take place only if brought about by a Supreme

Being, a Sovereign Legislator of the moral order, Who wills to

realize the bonum consummatum. Therefore such Supreme Being

exists.

But what can such inference avail, if the principle of causality

is not objectively valid or applicable beyond the domain of

phenomena ?

336 THEOR Y OF KNO W LEDGE

Before considering Kant s claim to the lawfulness of such reasoning in

support of our belief m the postulates of the practical reason, a point which

belongs to the relation between the two Critiques, we may note here a few

other obvious defects in his procedure. From his stoic conception of moral

duty he totally excludes the motive of happiness. Man s desire for happiness

is natural. Moreover the virtuous man deserves, merits happiness, as the

reward of well-doing : even on Kant s admission. Nay, more, a man is

bound to be virtuous, and so to render himself worthy of happiness. And

yet Kant would have it that if a man desires the happiness which he ought by

his conduct to deserve, such desire of his cannot be a morally good act

inasmuch as it is wanting in the essential element of disinterestedness !

The truth of course is that while disinterestedness is a perfection of the moral

act, the full measure of disinterestedness which would exclude all considera

tion of self and all thought of individual well-being is not essential to morally

righteous conduct.

Again, the unquenchable aspirations of man towards an ideal of moral

goodness, beauty, righteousness, above and beyond the satisfactions of

individual interests ; his inborn reverence, respect, admiration for this ideal,

are boldly emphasized in Kant s theory. "Two things," he exclaims,

" fill the soul with admiration and respect, the starry heaven above us and the

moral law within us." This is undeniably so. But then both of them alike

raise problems for the human mind. What is the import or significance of

such feelings ? It is all very well to say : " I wish, I desire, that the moral

order be respected ; I experience an imperative need to respect it ; my nature

impels me to respect it ; the moral dignity of man, the good of humanity, etc.,

demand it". All that only raises a problem (and not quite accurately, thus

expressed), but does not solve it. What right have I to assume a priori that

such needs, impulses, aspirations are not illusory ? How do I know that the

subordination of my personal satisfactions to a dictate of duty or a moral law

is right or reasonable, and not a mere self-deception ? Therefore I must seek

and find, by rational investigation of my own nature and the universe and

what they imply, a rational basis for, and justification of, those moral dictates

in obedience to which I am expected to shape my conduct and direct my life.

And so we find ourselves once more led to the thesis of intellectualism, that

man can attain to a reasoned certitude regarding his spontaneous assents,

whether these be speculative or moral or religious, if, and only if, he can find

for such assents a ground or motive that will be objectively valid under the

scrutiny of reflecting reason. Natural promptings of the will, aspirations of

the heart, impulses of feeling and sentiment, may serve as immediate motives

of spontaneous assents, and as provisional practical guides of conduct ; but

the ultimate ground of human certitude must be approved by reflecting reason,

and with reflecting reason the last word on certitude must ever rest.