 Section 10 of the Critique of Practical Reason, by Emanuel Kant, translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbot. First part, Elements of Pure Practical Reason. Book 1. The Analytic of Pure Practical Reason. Chapter 3. Of the Motives of Pure Practical Reason. Critical Examination of the Analytic of Pure Practical Reason. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org recording by Anos Simon. By the critical examination of a science, or of a portion of it which constitutes a system by itself, I understand the inquiry and prove why it must have this and no other systematic form when we compare it with another system which is based on a similar faculty of knowledge. Now practical and speculative reason are based on the same faculty so far as both are pure reason. Therefore the difference in their systematic form must be determined by the comparison of both, and the ground of this must be assigned. The Analytic of Pure Theoretic Reason had to do with the knowledge of such objects as may have been given to the understanding, and was obliged therefore to begin from intuition and consequently, as this is always sensible, from sensibility, and only after that could advance the concepts of the objects of this intuition and could only end with principles after both these had proceeded. On the contrary, since practical reason has not to do with objects so as to know them, but with its own faculty of realizing them, in accordance with the knowledge of them, that is, with a will which is a causality in as much as reason contains its determining principle, since consequently it has not to furnish an object of intuition, but as practical reason has to furnish only a law, because the notion of causality always implies the reference to a law which determines the existence of the many in relation to one another. Hence a critical examination of the Analytic of Reason, if this is to be practical reason, and this is properly the problem, must begin with a possibility of practical principles a priori. Only after that can it proceed to concepts of the objects of a practical reason, namely those of absolute good and evil, in order to assign them in accordance with those principles. For prior to those principles they cannot possibly be given as good and evil by any faculty of knowledge, and only then could the section be concluded with the last chapter, that namely which treats of the relation of the pure practical reason to the sensibility and of its necessary influence thereon, which is a priori cognizable, that is, of the moral sentiment. Thus the Analytic of the practical pure reason has the whole extent of the conditions of its use in common with the theoretical, but in reverse order. The Analytic of Pure Theoretic Reason was divided into transcendental aesthetic and transcendental logic, that of the practical reversely into logic and aesthetic of pure practical reason. If I may, for the sake of analogy merely, use these designations which are not quite suitable. This logic again was there divided into the Analytic of Concepts and that of Principles. Here into that of Principles and Concepts. The aesthetic also had in the former case two parts on account of the two kinds of sensible intuition. Here the sensibility is not considered as a capacity of intuition at all, but merely as feeling, which can be a subjective ground of desire, and in regard to it pure practical reason admits no further division. It is also easy to see the reason why this division into two parts with its subdivision was not actually adopted here, as one might have been induced to attempt by the example of the former critique. For since it is pure reason that is here considered in its practical use and consequently as proceeding from a priori principles and not from empirical principles of determination, hence the division of the Analytic of Pure Practical Reason must resemble that of a syllogism, namely proceeding from the universal in the major premise, the moral principle, through a minor premise containing a subsumption of possible actions, as good or evil, under the former, to the conclusion, namely the subjective determination of the will, an interest in the possible practical good and in the maxim founded on it. He who has been able to convince himself of the truth of the positions occurring in the Analytic will take pleasure in such comparisons, for they justly suggest the expectation that we may perhaps someday be able to discern the unity of the whole faculty of reason, theoretical as well as practical, and be able to derive all from one principle, which is what human reason inevitably demands as it finds complete satisfaction only in a perfectly systematic unity of its knowledge. If now we consider also the contents of the knowledge that we can have of a pure practical reason, and by means of it as shown by the Analytic, we find, along with a remarkable analogy between it and the theoretical, no less remarkable differences. As regards the theoretical, the faculty of a pure rational cognition, a priori, could be easily and evidently proved by examples from sciences, in which, as they put their principles to the test in so many ways by methodical use, there is not so much reason as in common knowledge to fear a secret mixture of empirical principles of cognition. But that pure reason without the yet mixture of any empirical principle is practical of itself. This could only be shown from the commonest practical use of reason by verifying the fact that every man's natural reason acknowledges the supreme practical principle as a supreme law of his will. A law completely a priori and not depending on any sensible data. It was necessary first to establish and verify the purity of its origin, even in the judgment of this common reason, before science could take it in hand to make use of it, as a fact, that is, prior to all disputation about its possibility, and all the consequences that may be drawn from it. But this circumstance may be readily explained from what has just been said, because practical pure reason must necessarily begin with principles, which therefore must be the first data, the foundation of all science, and cannot be derived from it. It was possible to effect this verification of moral principles as principles of a pure reason quite well and with sufficient certainty by a single appeal to the judgment of common sense, for this reason that anything empirical which might slip into our maxims as a determining principle of the will can be detected at once by the feeling of pleasure or pain which necessarily attaches to it as exciting desire, whereas pure practical reason positively refuses to admit this feeling into its principles as a condition. The heterogeneity of the determining principles, the empirical and rational, is clearly detected by this resistance of a practically legislating reason against every admixture of inclination and by a peculiar kind of sentiment, which, however, does not precede the legislation of the practical reason, but, on the contrary, is produced by this as a constraint, namely by the feeling of a respect such as no man has for inclinations of whatever kind but for the law only. And it is detected in so marked and prominent a manner that even the most uninstructed fail to see at once in an example presented to him that empirical principles of volition may indeed urge him to follow their attractions but that he can never be expected to obey anything but the pure practical law of reason alone. The distinction between the doctrine of happiness and the doctrine of morality in the former of which empirical principles constitute the entire foundation, while in the second they do not form is the first and most important office of the analytic of pure practical reason and it must proceed in it with as much exactness and, so to speak, scrupulousness as any geometer in his work. The philosopher, however, has greater difficulties to contend with here as always in rational cognition by means of concepts merely without construction because he cannot take any intuition as a foundation for a pure nominal. He has, however, this advantage that, like the chemist, he can at any time make an experiment with every man's practical reason for the purpose of distinguishing the moral, pure principle of determination from the empirical namely by adding the moral law as a determining principle to the empirically affected will. For example, that of the man who would be ready to lie because he can gain something thereby. It is as if the analyst added alkali to a solution of Lyme in hydrochloric acid. The acid at once forsakes the Lyme, combines with the alkali and the Lyme is precipitated just in the same way if to a man who is otherwise honest or who, for this occasion, places himself only in thought in the position of an honest man. We present the moral law by which he recognizes the worthlessness of the liar, his practical reason and of what ought to be done at once forsakes the advantage combines with that which maintains in him respect for his own person, truthfulness, and the advantage after it has been separated and washed from every particle of reason which is altogether on the side of duty is easily weighed by everyone so that it can enter into combination with reason in other cases only not where it could be opposed to the moral law which reason never forsakes but most unites itself with but it does not follow that this distinction between the principle of happiness and that of morality is an opposition between them and pure practical reason does not require that we should renounce all claim to happiness but only that the moment duty is in question we should take no account of happiness it may even in certain respect be a duty to provide for happiness partly because including skill, wealth, riches it contains means for the fulfillment of our duty partly because the absence of it for example poverty implies temptations to transgress our duty but it can never be an immediate duty to promote our happiness still less cannot be the principle of all duty now as all determining principles of the will accept the law of pure practical reason alone the moral law are all empirical and therefore as such belong to the principle of happiness they must all be kept apart from the supreme principle of morality and never be incorporated with it as a condition since this would be to destroy all moral worth just as much as any empirical of mixture with geometrical principles would destroy the certainty of mathematical evidence which in Plato's opinion is the most excellent thing in mathematics even surpassing their utility instead however of the deduction of the supreme principle of pure practical reason that is the explanation of the possibility of such a knowledge a priori the utmost we were able to do was to show that if we saw the possibility of the freedom of an efficient cause we should also see not merely the possibility but even the necessity of the moral law as a supreme practical law of rational beings to whom we attribute freedom of causality of their will because both concepts are so inseparably united that we might define practical freedom as independence of the will on anything but the moral law but we cannot perceive the possibility of the freedom of an efficient cause especially in the world of sense we are fortunate if only we can be sufficiently assured that there is no proof of its impossibility and are now by the moral law which postulates it compelled and therefore authorized to assume it however there are still many who think that they can explain this freedom on empirical principles like any other physical faculty and treated as a psychological property the explanation of which only requires a more exact study of the nature of the soul and of the motives of the will and not as a transcendental predicate of the causality of a being that belongs to the world of sense which is really the point they thus deprive us of the grand revelation which we obtain through practical reason by means of the moral law the revelation namely of a super sensible world by the realization of the otherwise transcendent concept of freedom and by this the privus also of the moral law itself which admits no empirical principle of determination therefore it will be necessary to add something here as a protection against this delusion of capitalism in its naked superficiality the notion of causality as physical necessity in opposition to the same notion as freedom concerns only the existence of things so far as it is determinable in time and consequently as phenomena in opposition to their causality as things in themselves now if we take the attributes of existence of things in time for attributes of things in themselves which is the common view then it is impossible to reconcile the necessity of the causal relation with freedom they are contradictory for from the former it follows that every event and consequently every action that takes place at a certain point of time is a necessary result of what existed in time proceeding now as time passed is no longer in my power hence every action that I perform must be the necessary result of certain grounds which are not in my power that is at the moment in which I am acting I am never free nay even if I assume that my whole existence is independent on any foreign cause for instance God so that the determining principles of my causality and even of my whole existence were not outside myself yet this would not in a least transform that physical necessity into freedom for at every moment of time I am still under the necessity of being determined to action by that which is not in my power and the series of events infinite a parter priori which I only continue according to a predetermined order and could never begin of myself would be a continuous physical chain and therefore my causality would never be freedom if then we would attribute freedom to a being whose existence is determined in time we cannot accept him from the law of necessity as to all events in his existence and consequently as to his actions also for that would be to hand him over to blind chance now as this law inevitably applies to all the causality of things so far as their existence is determinable in time it follows that if this were the mode in which we had also to conceive the existence of these things in themselves freedom must be rejected as a vain and impossible conception consequently if we would still save it no other way remains but to consider that the existence of a thing so far as it is determinable in time and therefore its causality according to the law of physical necessity belong to appearance and to attribute freedom to the same being as a thing in itself this is certainly inevitable if we would retain both these contradictory concepts together but an application when we try to explain their combination in one and the same action great difficulties present themselves which seem to render such a combination impracticable when I say of a man who commits a theft that by the law of causality this deed is a necessary result of the determining causes in proceeding time then it was impossible that it could not have happened how then can the judgment according to the moral law make any change and suppose that it could have been omitted because the law says it ought to have been omitted that is how can a man be called quite free at the same moment and with respect to the same action in which he is subject to an inevitable physical necessity some try to evade this by saying that the causes that determine his causality are of such a kind as to agree with a comparative notion of freedom according to this that is sometimes called a free effect the determining physical cause of which lies within the acting thing itself for example that which a projectile performs when it is in free motion in which case we use the word freedom because while it is in flight it is not urged by anything external or as we call the motion of a clock a free motion because it moves its hands itself which therefore do not require to be pushed by external force so although the actions of man are necessarily determined by causes which proceed in time we yet call them free because these causes are ideas produced by our own faculties whereby desires are evoked on occasion of circumstances and hence actions are wrought according to our own pleasure this is a wretched subterfuge with which some persons still let themselves be put off and so think they have solved with a pretty word jugglery that difficult problem at the solution of which centuries have laboured in vain and which can therefore scarcely be found so completely on the surface in fact in the question about the freedom which must be the foundation of all moral laws and the consequent responsibility it does not matter whether the principles which necessarily determine causality by physical law reside within the subject or without him or in the former case whether these principles are instinctive or are conceived by reason if as is admitted by these men themselves these determining ideas have the ground of their existence in time and in the antecedent state and this again in an antecedent etc then it matters not that these are internal it matters not that they have a psychological and not a mechanical causality that is produce actions by means of ideas and not by bodily movements there are still determining principles of the causality of a being whose existence is determinable in time and therefore under the necessitation of conditions of past time which therefore when the subject has to act are no longer in his power this may imply psychological freedom if we choose to apply this term to a merely internal chain of ideas in the mind but it involves physical necessity and therefore leaves no room for transcendental freedom which must be conceived as independence on everything empirical on nature generally whether it is an object of the internal sense considered in time only or of the external in time and space without this freedom in the letter and true sense which alone is practical a priori no moral law and no moral imputation are possible just for this reason the necessity of events in time according to the physical law of causality may be called the mechanism of nature although we do not mean by this that things which are subject to it must be really material machines we look here only to the necessity of the connection of events in a time series as it is developed according to the physical law whether the subject in which this development takes place is called automaton matriale when the mechanical being is moved by matter or with Leibniz spirituale when it is impelled by ideas and if the freedom of our will were no other than a letter say the psychological and comparative not also transcendental that is absolute then it would at bottom be nothing better than the freedom of a turnspit which when once it is wound up accomplishes its motions of itself now in order to remove in the supposed case the apparent contradiction between freedom and the mechanism of nature in one and the same action we must remember what was said in the critique of pure reason or what follows therefrom that is that the necessity of nature which cannot coexist with the freedom of the subject pertains only to the attributes of the thing that is subject to the time conditions consequently only to those of the acting subject as a phenomenon that therefore in this respect the determining principles of every action of the same reside in what belongs to past time and is no longer in his power in which must be included his own past actions and the character that these may determine for him in his own eyes as a phenomenon but the very same subject being on the other side conscious of himself as a thing in himself considers his existence also insofar as it is not subject to time conditions and regards himself as only determinable by laws which he gives himself through reason and in this his existence nothing is antecedent to the determination of his will but every action and in general every modification of his existence varying according to his internal sense even the whole series of his existence as a sensible being is in the consciousness of his super sensible existence nothing but the result and never to be regarded as the determining principle of his causality as a numinon in this view now the rational being can just say of every unlawful action that he performs that he could very well have lessed undone although as appearance it is sufficiently determined in the past and in this respect is absolutely necessary for it with all the past which determines it belongs to the one single phenomenon of his character which he makes for himself in consequence of which he imputes the causality of those appearances to himself as a cause independent of sensibility with this agree perfectly the judicial sentences of that wonderful faculty in us of critical conscience a man may use as much art as he likes in order to paint himself an unlawful act that he remembers as an unintentional error a mere oversight such as one can never altogether avoid and therefore as something in which he was carried away by the stream of physical necessity and thus to make himself out innocent yet he finds that the advocate who speaks in his favor can by no means silence the accuser within if only he is conscious of the crime when he did this wrong he was in his senses that is in possession of his freedom and nevertheless he accounts for his error from some bad habits which by gradual neglect of attention he has allowed to grow upon him to such a degree that he can regard his error as its natural consequence although this cannot protect him from the blame and reproach which he casts upon himself this is also the ground of repentance for a long past action of it a painful feeling produced by the moral sentiment which is practically void in so far as it cannot serve to undo what has been done hence priestly as a true and consistent fatalist declares that observed and he deserves to be commended for this candor more than those who while they maintain the mechanism for will in fact and its freedom in words only yet wish it to be thought that they include it in their system of compromise although they do not explain the possibility of such moral imputation but the pain is quite legitimate because when the law of our intelligible supersensible existence the moral law is in question reason recognizes no distinction of time and only asks whether the event belongs to me as my act and then always morally connects the same feeling with it whether it has happened just now or long ago for in reference to the supersensible consciousness that is freedom the life of sense is but a single phenomenon which in as much as it contains merely manifestations of the mental disposition with regard to the moral law that is of the character must be judged not according to the physical necessity that belongs to it as phenomenon but according to the absolute spontaneity of freedom it may therefore be admitted that if it were possible to have so profound insight into a man's mental character as shown by internal as well as external actions as to know all its motives even the smallest and likewise all the external occasions that can influence them we could calculate a man's conduct for the future with as great certainty as a lunar or solar eclipse and nevertheless we may maintain that the man is free in fact if we were capable of a further glance namely an intellectual intuition of the same subject which indeed is not granted to us and instead of it we have only the rational concept then we should perceive that this whole chain of appearances in regard to all that concerns the moral laws depends on the spontaneity of the subject as a thing in itself of the determination of which no physical explanation can be given in default of this intuition the moral law assures us of this distinction between the relation of our actions to our sensible nature and the relation of this sensible nature to the super sensible substratum in us in this view which is natural to our reason though inexplicable we can also justify some judgments which we passed with all conscientiousness and which yet at first sight seem quite opposed to all equity there are cases in which men even with the same education which has been profitable to others yet show such early depravity and so continue to progress in it to years of manhood that they are thought to be born villains and their character altogether incapable of improvement and nevertheless they are judged for what they do or leave undone they are reproached for their faults as guilty nay, they themselves the children regard these reproaches as well founded exactly as if in spite of the hopeless natural quality of mind ascribed to them they remained just as responsible as a man this could not happen if we did not suppose that whatever springs from a man's choice as every action intentionally performed undoubtedly does has as its foundation a free causality which from early youth expresses its character in its manifestations that is actions these on account of the uniformity of conduct exhibit a natural connection which however does not make the vicious quality of the will necessary but on the contrary is the consequence of the evil principles voluntarily adopted and unchangeable which only make it so much the more culpable and deserving of punishment there still remains a difficulty in the combination of freedom with a mechanism of nature in a being belonging to a world of sense a difficulty which even after all of foregoing is admitted threatens freedom with complete destruction but with this danger there is also a circumstance of us hope of an issue still favorable to freedom namely that the same difficulty presses much more strongly in fact as we shall presently see presses only on the system that holds the existence determinable in time and space to be the existence of things in themselves it does not therefore oblige us to give up our capital supposition of the ideality of time as a mere form of sensible intuition and consequently as a mere manner of representation which is proper to the subject as belonging to the world of sense and therefore it only requires that this view be reconciled with this idea the difficulty is as follows even if it is admitted that the super sensible subject can be free with respect to a given action although as a subject also belonging to the world of sense he is under mechanical conditions with respect to the same action still as soon as we allow that God as universal first cause is also the cause of the existence of substance a proposition which can never be given up without at the same time giving up the notion of God as the being of all beings and therewith giving up his all sufficiency on which everything and theology depends it seems as if we must admit that a man's actions have the determining principle in something which is wholly out of his power namely in the causality of a supreme being distinct from himself and on whom his own existence and the whole determination of his causality are absolutely dependent in point of fact if a man's actions as belonging to his modifications in time were not merely modifications of him as appearance but as a thing in itself freedom could not be saved man would be a marionette or an automaton like Vaucan's sons prepared and wound up by the supreme artist consciousness would indeed make him a thinking automaton that the consciousness of his own spontaneity would be mere delusion if this were mistaken for freedom and it would serve this name only in a comparative sense since although the proximate determining causes of its motion and a long series of their determining causes are internal yet the last and highest is found in a foreign hand therefore I do not see how those who still insist on regarding time and space as attributes belonging to the existence of things in themselves can avoid admitting the futility of actions or if, like the otherwise acute Mendelssohn they allow them to be conditions necessarily belonging to the existence of finite and derived beings but not to that of the infinite supreme being I do not see on what ground they can justify such a distinction or indeed how they can avoid the contradiction that meets them when they hope that existence in time is not necessarily belonging to finite things in themselves whereas God is the cause of this existence but cannot be the cause of time or space itself since this must be presupposed as a necessary a priori condition of the existence of things and consequently as regards the existence of these things his causality must be subject to conditions and even to the condition of time and this would inevitably bring in to the notions of his infinity and independence on the other hand it is quite easy for us to draw the distinction between the attribute of the divine existence of being independent on all time conditions and that of a being of the world of sense the distinction being that between the existence of a being in itself and that of a thing in appearance hence if this ideality of time and space is not adopted nothing remains but spinosism space and time are essential attributes of the supreme being himself and the things depended on him our cells therefore included are not substances but merely accidents inherent in him since if these things as effects exist in time only this being the condition of their existence in themselves then the actions of these beings must be simply his actions which he performs in some place and time this spinosism in spite of the absurdity of its fundamental idea argues more consistently than the creation theory can when beings assumed to be substances and beings in themselves existing in time are regarded as effects of a supreme cause but yet as not belonging to him and his action but as separate substances the above mentioned difficulty is resolved briefly and clearly as follows if existence in time is a mere sensible mode of representation belonging to thinking beings in the world and consequently does not apply to them as things in themselves then the creation of these beings is a creation of things in themselves since the notion of creation does not belong to the sensible form of representation of existence or to causality but can only be referred to numina consequently when I say of beings in the world of sense that they are created I so far regard them as numina as it would be a contradiction therefore to say that God is a creator of appearances so also it is a contradiction to say that as creator he is the cause of actions in the world of sense and therefore as appearances although he is the cause of the existence of the acting beings which are numina if now it is possible to affirm freedom in spite of the natural mechanism of actions as appearances by regarding existence in time as something that belongs only to appearances not to things in themselves then the circumstance that the acting beings are creatures cannot make the slightest difference since creation concerns their super sensible and not their sensible existence and therefore cannot be regarded as the determining principle of the appearances it would be quite different if the beings in the world as things themselves exist in time since in that case the creator of substance would be at the same time the author of the whole mechanism of the substance of so great importance is a separation of time as well as space from the existence of things in themselves which was affected in the critique of the pure speculative reason it may be said that the solution here proposed involves great difficulty in itself and is scarcely susceptible of a lucid exposition but is any other solution that has been attempted or that may be attempted easier and more intelligible rather might we say that the dogmatic teachers of metaphysics have shown more shrewdness than candor in keeping this difficult point out of sight as much as possible in the hope that if they said nothing about it probably no one would think of it if science is to be advanced all difficulties must be laid open and we must even search for those that are hidden and the difficulty calls forth a remedy which cannot be discovered without science gaining either in extent or in exactness and thus even obstacles become means of increasing the thoroughness of science on the other hand if the difficulties are intentionally concealed or merely removed by palliatives then sooner or later they burst out into incurable mischiefs which brings science to ruin in an absolute skepticism since it is properly speaking the notion of freedom alone amongst all the ideas of pure speculative reason that so greatly enlarges our knowledge in the sphere of the super sensible though only of our practical knowledge I ask myself why it exclusively possesses so great fertility whereas the others only designate the faking space for possible beings of the pure understanding but are unable by any means to define the concept of them I presently find that as I cannot think anything without a category I must first look for a category for the rational idea of freedom with which I am now concerned and this is the category of causality and although freedom a concept of the reason being a transcendent concept cannot have any intuition corresponding to it yet the concept of the understanding for the synthesis of which the former demands the unconditioned namely the concept of causality must have a sensible intuition given by which first its objective reality is assured now the categories are all divided into two classes the mathematical which concern the unity of synthesis in the conception of objects and the dynamical which refer to the unity of synthesis in the conception of the existence of objects the former those of magnitude and quality always contain a synthesis of the homogeneous and it is not possible to find in this the unconditioned and accedent to what is given in sensible intuition as conditioned in space and time as this would itself have to belong to space and time and therefore be again still conditioned once it resulted in the dialectic of pure theoretic reason that the opposite methods of attaining the unconditioned and the totality of the conditions were both wrong the categories of the second class those of causality did not require this homogeneity of the conditioned and the conditioned in synthesis since here what we have to explain is not how the intuition is compounded from a manifold in it but only how the existence of the conditioned object corresponding to it is added to the existence of the condition added namely in the understanding as connected therewith and in that case it was allowable to suppose in the super sensible world accedent to the altogether conditioned in the world of sense both as regards to causal connection and the contingent existence of things themselves although this unconditioned remained indeterminate and to make the synthesis transcendent hence it was found in the dialectic of the pure speculative reason that the two apparently opposite methods of obtaining for the conditioned and the unconditioned were not really contradictory for example in the synthesis of causality to conceive for the conditioned in a series of causes and effects of the sensible world a causality which has no sensible condition and that the same action which as belonging to the world of sense is always sensibly conditioned that is mechanically necessary yet at the same time may be derived from a causality not sensibly conditioned being the causality of the acting being as belonging to the super sensible world may consequently be conceived as free now the only point in question was to change this maybe into is that is that we should be able to show in an actual case as it were by effect that certain actions imply such a causality namely the intellectual sensibly unconditioned whether they are actual or only commanded that is objectively necessary in a practical sense we could not hope to find this connection as actually given in experience as events of the sensible world since causality with freedom must always be sought outside the world of sense in the world of intelligence but things of sense are the only things offered to our perception and observation hence nothing remained but to find an incontestable objective principle of causality which excludes all sensible conditions that is a principle in which reason does not appeal further to something else in the determining ground of its causality but contains this determining ground itself by means of that principle and in which therefore it is itself as pure reason practical now this principle had not to be searched for or discovered it had long been in the reason of all men and incorporated in their nature and is the principle of morality therefore that unconditioned causality with the faculty of it namely is no longer merely indefinitely and problematically thought this speculative reason could prove to be feasible but is even as regards to the law of its causality definitely and assertorily known and with it the fact that a being I myself belonging to the world of sense belongs also to the super sensible world this is also positively known and thus the reality of the super sensible world is established and in practical respects definitely given and this definiteness which for theoretical purposes would be transcendent is for practical purposes imminent we could not however make a similar step as regards the second dynamical idea namely that of a necessary being we could not rise to it from the sensible world without the aid of the first dynamical idea for if we attempted to do so we should have ventured to leave at a bound all that is given to us and to leap to that of which nothing is given us that can help us to effect the connection of such a super sensible being with the world of sense since the necessary being would have to be known as given outside ourselves on the other hand it is now obvious that this connection is quite possible in relation to our own subject in as much as I know myself to be on the one side as an intelligible super sensible being determined by the moral law by means of freedom and on the other side as acting in the world of sense it is the concept of freedom alone that enables us to find the unconditioned and intelligible for the conditioned and sensible without going out of ourselves for it is our own reason that by means of supreme and unconditional practical law knows that itself and the being that is conscious of this law our own person belong to the pure world of understanding and moreover defines the manner in which as such it can be active in this way it can be understood why in the whole faculty of reason it is the practical reason only that can help us to pass beyond the world of sense and give us knowledge of a super sensible order and connection which however for this very reason cannot be extended further than is necessary for pure practical purposes let me be permitted on this occasion to make one more remark namely that every step that we make with pure reason even in the practical sphere where no attention is paid to subtle speculation nevertheless accords with all the material points of the critique of the theoretical reason as closely and directly as if each step had been thought out with deliberate purpose to establish this confirmation such a thorough agreement wholly and sought for and quite obvious as anyone can convince himself that we will only carry moral inquiries up to their principles between the most important proposition of practical reason and the often seemingly too subtle and needless remarks of the critique of the speculative reason occasions surprise and astonishment and confirms the maxim already recognised and praised by others namely that in every scientific inquiry we should pursue our way steadily with all possible exactness and frankness without caring for any objections that may be raised from outside its sphere but as far as we can to carry out our inquiry truthfully and completely by itself frequent observation has convinced me that when such researches are concluded that which in one part of them appear to me very questionable considered in relation to other extraneous doctrines when I left this doubtfulness out of sight for a time and only attended to the business in hand until it was completed at last was unexpectedly found to agree perfectly with what had been discovered separately without the least regard to those doctrines and without any partiality or prejudice for them authors would save themselves many errors and much labour lost because spent on a delusion if they could only resolve to go to work with more frankness end of section 10 LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org this reading by Karl Manchester 2008 The Critique of Practical Reason by Emanuel Kant translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott First Part Elements of Pure Practical Reason Book 2 Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason Chapter 1 of a dialectic of pure practical reason generally pure reason always has its dialectic whether it is considered in its speculative or its practical employment for it requires the absolute totality of the conditions of what is given conditioned and this can only be found in things in themselves but as all conceptions of things in themselves must be referred to intuitions with us men these can never be other than sensible and hence can never enable us to know objects as things in themselves but only as appearances and since the unconditioned can never be found in this chain of appearances which consists only of conditioned and conditions thus from applying this rational idea of the totality of the conditions in other words of the unconditioned to appearances which comprises an inevitable illusion as if these latter were things in themselves for in the absence of a warning critique they are always regarded as such this illusion would never be noticed as delusive if it did not betray itself by a conflict of reason with itself when it applies to appearances its fundamental principle of presupposing the unconditioned to everything conditioned reason is compelled to trace this illusion to its source and search how it can be removed and this can only be done by a complete critical examination of the whole pure faculty of reason so that the antinomy of the pure reason which is manifest in its dialectic is in fact the most beneficial error into which human reason could ever have fallen since it at last drives us to search for the key to escape from this labyrinth and when this key is found it further discovers that which we did not seek but yet had need of namely a view into a higher and immutable order of things in which we even now are and in which we are thereby enabled by definite precepts to continue to live according to the highest dictates of reason it may be seen in detail in the critique of pure reason how in its speculative employment this natural dialectic is to be solved and how the error which arises from a very natural illusion may be guarded against but reason in its practical use is not a wit better off as pure practical reason it likewise seeks to find the unconditioned for the practically conditioned which rests on inclinations and natural wants and this is not as the determining principle of the will but even when this is given in the moral law it seeks the unconditioned totality of the object of pure practical reason under the name of the summum bonum to define this idea practically i.e. sufficiently for the maxims of our rational conduct is the business of practical wisdom and this again as a science is philosophy in the sense in which the word was understood by the ancients with whom it meant instruction in the conception in which the summum bonum was to be placed and the conduct by which it was to be obtained it would be well to leave this word in its ancient signification as a doctrine of the summum bonum so far as reason endeavours to make this into a science for on the one hand the restriction annexed to suit the Greek expression which signifies the love of wisdom and yet at the same time would be sufficient to embrace under the name of philosophy the love of science that is to say of all speculative rational knowledge so far as it is serveable to reason both for that conception and also for the practical principle determining our conduct without letting out of sight the main end on account of which alone it can be called a doctrine of practical wisdom on the other hand it would be no harm to deter the self-conceit of one who ventures to claim the title of philosopher by holding before him in the very definition a standard of self-estimation which would very much lower his pretensions for a teacher of wisdom would mean something more than a scholar who has not come so far as to guide himself to others with certain expectation of attaining so high an end it would mean a master in the knowledge of wisdom which implies more than a modest man would claim for himself thus philosophy as well as wisdom would always remain an ideal which objectively is presented complete in reason alone while subjectively for the person it is only the goal of his unceasing endeavours and no one would be justified in professing to be in possession of it so as to assume the name of philosopher who could not also show its infallible effects in his own person as an example in his self-mastery and the unquestioned interest that he takes preeminently in the general good and this the ancients also required as a condition of deserving that honourable title we have another preliminary remark to make acting the dialectic of the pure practical reason on the point of the definition of the summum bonum a successful solution of which dialectic would lead us to expect as in case of that of the theoretical reason the most beneficial effects in as much as the self-contradictions of pure practical reason honestly stated and not concealed forces to undertake a complete critique of this faculty the moral law is the sole determining principle of a pure will but since this is merely formal vis as prescribing only the form of the maxim as universally legislative it abstracts as a determining principle from all matter that is to say from every object of volition hence though the summum bonum may be the whole object of a pure practical reason i.e. pure will yet it is not on that account to be regarded as its determining principle and the moral law alone must be regarded as the principle on which that and its realisation or promotion are aimed at this remark is important in so delicate a case as the determination of moral principles where the slightest misinterpretation perverts men's minds for it will have been seen from the analytic that if we assume any object under the name of a good as a determining principle of the will prior to the moral law and then deduce from it the supreme practical principle this would always introduce heteronomy and crush out the moral principle it is however evident that if the notion of the summum bonum includes that of the moral law as its supreme condition then the summum bonum would not merely be an object but the notion of it and the conception of its existence as possible by our own practical reason would likewise be the determining principle of the will since in that case the will is in fact determined by the moral law which is already included in this conception and by no other object as the principle of autonomy requires this order of the conceptions of the will must not be lost sight of as otherwise we should misunderstand ourselves and think we had fallen into a contradiction while everything remains in perfect harmony End of section 11 chapter 2 of pure practical reason chapter 2 of the dialectic of pure reason in defining the conception of the summum bonum this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by D. E. Wittkauer the conception of the summum itself contains an ambiguity which might occasion needless disputes if we did not attend to it the summum may mean either the supreme supremum or the perfect consumatum the former is that condition which is itself unconditioned that is is not subordinate to any other originarium the second is that whole which is not a part of the greater whole of the same kind perfectisimum it has been shown in the analytic that virtue as worthiness to be happy is the supreme condition of all that can appear to us desirable and consequently of all our pursuit of happiness and is 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 for to need happiness to deserve it and yet at the same time to participate in it cannot be consistent with the perfect volition of a rational being possessed at the same time of all power if for the sake of experiment we conceive such a being now in as much as virtue and happiness together constitute the possession of the sumum 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 sumum bonum of a possible world hence this sumum 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 of itself absolutely and in all respects good but always presupposes morally right behavior as its condition when two elements are necessarily united in one concept they must be connected as reason and consequence and this either so that their unity is considered as analytical logical connection or as synthetical connection the former following the law of identity the latter that of causality the connection of virtue and happiness may therefore be understood in two ways either the endeavor to be virtuous and the rational pursuit of happiness are not two distinct actions but absolutely identical in which case no maxim need be made the principle of the former other than what serves for the latter or the connection consists in this that virtue produces happiness as something distinct from the consciousness of virtue as a cause produces an effect the ancient greek schools were properly speaking only two and in determining the conception of the summum bonum these followed in fact one and the same method in as much as they did not allow virtue and happiness to be regarded as two distinct elements of the summum bonum and consequently sought the unity of the principle by the rule of identity but they differed as to which of the two was to be taken as the fundamental notion the epicurean said quote to be conscious that one's maxims lead to happiness is virtue unquote the stoic said to be conscious of one's virtue is happiness quote with the former prudence was equivalent to morality with the latter who chose a higher designation for virtue morality alone was true wisdom while we must admire the men who in such early times tried all imaginable ways of extending the domain of philosophy we must at the same time lament that their acuteness was unfortunately misapplied in trying to trace out identity between two extremely heterogeneous notions those of happiness and virtue but it agrees with the dialectical spirit of their times and subtle minds are even now sometimes misled in the same way to get rid of irreconcilable differences in principle by seeking to change them into a mere contest about words and thus apparently working out the identity of the notion under different names and this usually occurs in cases where the combination of heterogeneous principles lies so deep or so high or would require so complete a transformation of the doctrines assumed in the rest of the philosophical system that men are afraid to penetrate deeply into the real difference and prefer treating it as a difference in questions of form while both schools sought to trace out the identity of the practical principles of virtue and happiness they were not agreed as to the way in which they tried to force this identity but were separated infinitely from one another the one placing its principle on the side of sense, the other on that of reason, the one in the consciousness of sensible wants the other in the independence of practical reason on all sensible grounds of determination according to the Epicurean the notion of virtue was already involved in the maxim to promote one's own happiness according to the Stoics on the other hand the feeling of happiness was already contained in the consciousness of virtue now whatever is contained in another notion is identical with part of the containing notion but not with the whole and moreover two holes may be specifically distinct although they consist of the same parts namely if the parts are united into a whole in totally different ways the Stoic maintained that virtue was the whole summum bonum and happiness only the consciousness of possessing it as making part of the state of the subject the Epicurean maintained that happiness was the whole summum bonum and virtue only the form of the maxim for its pursuit namely the rational use of the means for attaining it it is clear from the analytic that the maxims of virtue and those of private happiness are quite heterogeneous as to their supreme practical principle and although they belong to one summum bonum which together they make possible yet they are so far from coinciding that they restrict and check one another very much in the same subject thus the question how is the summum bonum practically possible still remains an unsolved problem notwithstanding all the attempts at coalition that have hitherto been made the analytic has however shown what it is that makes the problem difficult to solve namely that happiness and morality are two specifically distinct elements of the summum bonum and therefore their combination cannot be analytically cognized as if the man that seeks his own happiness should find by mere analysis of his conception that in so acting he is virtuous or as if the man that follows virtue should in the consciousness of such conduct find that he is already happy ipso facto but must be a synthesis of concepts now since this combination is recognized as a priori and therefore as practically necessary and consequently not as derived from experience so that the possibility of the summum bonum does not rest on any empirical principle it follows that the deduction, legitimation of this concept must be transcendental it is a priori morally necessary to produce the summum bonum by freedom of the will therefore the condition of its possibility must rest solely on a priori principles of cognition subsection 1 the antinomy of practical reason in the summum bonum which is practical for us that is to be realized by our will virtue and happiness are thought as necessarily combined so that the one cannot be assumed by pure practical reason without the other also being attached to it now this combination like every other is either analytical or synthetical it has been shown that it cannot be analytical it must then be synthetical and more particularly must be conceived as the connection of cause and effect since it concerns a practical good that is one that is possible by means of action consequently 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 as was proved in the analytic 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 but the second is also impossible 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 dispositions of the will but on the knowledge of the laws of nature and the physical power to use them for one's purposes consequently we cannot expect in the world by the most punctilious observance of the moral laws any necessary connection of happiness with virtue adequate to the summum bonum now as the promotion of this summum bonum the conception of which contains this connection is a priori a necessary object of our will and inseparably attached to the moral law the impossibility of the former must prove the falsity of the latter if then the supreme good is not possible by practical rules then the moral law also which commands us to promote it is directed to vain imaginary ends and must consequently be false end of section 12 section 13 of the critique of practical reason by Emanuel Kant Thomas Kingsmill Abbott first part elements of pure practical reason book 2 dialectic of pure practical reason chapter 2 of the dialectic of pure reason in defining the conception of the summum bonum subsection 2 critical solution of the antinomy of practical reason this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by D.E. Wittkauer the antinomy of pure speculative reason exhibits a similar conflict between freedom and physical necessity in the causality of events in the world it was solved by showing that there is no real contradiction between the events and even the world in which they occur are regarded as they ought to be merely as appearances since one and the same acting being as an appearance even to his own inner sense has a causality in the world of sense that always conforms to the mechanism of nature but with respect to the same events so far as the acting person regards himself at the same time as a numinon as pure intelligence in an existence not dependent on the condition of time he can contain a principle by which that causality acting according to laws of nature is determined but which is itself free from all laws of nature it is just the same with the foregoing antinomy of pure practical reason the first of the two propositions that the endeavor after happiness produces a virtuous mind is absolutely false but the second that a virtuous mind necessarily produces happiness is not absolutely false but only in so far as virtue is considered as a form of causality in the sensible world and consequently only if I suppose existence in it to be the only sort of existence of a rational being it is then only conditionally false but as I am not only justified in thinking that I exist also as a numinon in the world of the understanding but even have in the moral law a purely intellectual determining principle of my causality in the sensible world it is not impossible that morality of mind should have a connection as cause with happiness as an effect in the sensible world if not immediate yet immediate, namely through an intelligent author of nature and moreover necessary while in a system of nature which is merely an object to the senses this combination could never occur except contingently and therefore could not suffice for the summum bonum thus not withstanding this seeming conflict of practical reason with itself the summum bonum which is the necessary supreme end of a will morally determined is a true object thereof for it is practically possible and the maxims of the will as regards their matter refer to it have object of reality which at first was threatened by the antinomy that appeared in the connection of morality with happiness by general law but this was merely from a misconception because the relation between appearances was taken for a relation of the things in themselves to these appearances when we find ourselves obliged to go so far namely in connection with an intelligible world to find the possibility of the summum bonum which reason points out to all rational beings as the goal of all their moral wishes it must seem strange that nevertheless the philosophers both of ancient and modern times have been able to find happiness in accurate proportion to virtue even in this life in the sensible world or have persuaded themselves that they were conscious thereof for Epicurus as well as the Stoics extolled above everything the happiness that springs from the consciousness of living virtuously and the former was not so base in his practical precepts as one might infer from the principles of his theory which he used for explanation and not for action or as they were interpreted by many who were misled by his using the term pleasure for contentment on the contrary he reckoned the most disinterested practice of good amongst the ways of enjoying the most intimate delight and his scheme of pleasure by which he meant constant cheerfulness of mind included the moderation and control of the inclinations such as the strictest moral philosopher he differed from the Stoics chiefly in making this pleasure the motive which they very rightly refused to do for on the one hand the virtuous Epicurus like many well-intentioned men of his day who do not reflect deeply enough on their principles fell into the error of presupposing the virtuous disposition in the persons for whom he wished to provide the springs to virtue and indeed the upright man cannot be happy if he is not first conscious of his uprightness since with such a character the reproach that his habit of thought would oblige him to make against himself in case of transgression and his moral self-condemnation would rob him of all enjoyment of the pleasantness which his condition might otherwise contain but the question is how is such a disposition possible in the first instance and such a habit of thought in estimating the worth of one's existence since prior to it there can be in the subject no feeling at all for moral worth if a man is virtuous without being conscious of his integrity in every action he will certainly not enjoy life however favorable fortune may be to him in its physical circumstances but can we make him virtuous in the first instance in other words before he esteems the moral worth of his existence so highly by praising to him the peace of mind that would result from the consciousness of an integrity for which he has no sense on the other hand however there is here an occasion of vitium sobrentionis and as it were of an optical illusion in the self-consciousness of what one does as distinguished from what one feels an illusion which even the most experienced cannot altogether avoid the moral disposition of mind is necessarily combined with a consciousness that the will is directly determined by the law now the consciousness of a determination of the faculty of desire is always the source of a satisfaction in the resulting action this pleasure, this satisfaction in oneself is not the determining principle of the action on the contrary the determination of the will directly by reason is the source of the feeling of pleasure and this remains a pure practical not sensible determination of the faculty of desire now as this determination has exactly the same effect within an impelling to an activity that a feeling of the pleasure to be expected from the desired end would have had we easily look on what we ourselves do as something which we merely passively feel and take the moral spring for a sensible impulse just as it happens in the so-called illusion of the senses in this case the inner sense it is a sublime thing in human nature to be determined to actions immediately by a purely rational law sublime even is the illusion that regards the subjective side of this capacity of intellectual determination as something sensible and the effect of a special sensible feeling for an intellectual feeling would be a contradiction it is also of great importance to attend to this property and as much as possible to cultivate the effect of reason on this feeling but we must beware lest by falsely extolling this moral determining principle as a spring making its source lie in particular feelings of pleasure which are in fact only results we degrade and disfigure the true genuine spring the law itself by putting as it were thus foil upon it respect not pleasure or enjoyment of happiness is something for which it is not possible that reason should have any antecedent feeling as its foundation for this would always be sensible and pathological and consciousness of immediate obligation of the will by the law is by no means analogous to the feeling of pleasure although in relation to the faculty it produces the same effect but from different sources it is only by this mode of conception however that we can attain what we are seeking namely that actions be done not merely in accordance with duty as a result of pleasant feelings but from duty which must be the true end of all moral cultivation have we not however a word which does not express enjoyment as happiness does but indicates a satisfaction in one's existence and analog of the happiness which must necessarily accompany the consciousness of virtue yes this word is self contentment which in its proper signification always designates only a negative satisfaction in one's existence in which one is conscious of needing nothing freedom and the consciousness of it as a faculty of following the moral law with unyielding resolution is independence of inclinations at least as motives determining though not as affecting our desire and so far as I am conscious of this freedom in following my moral maxims it is the only source of an unaltered contentment which is necessarily connected with it and rests on no special feeling this may be called intellectual contentment the sensible contentment improperly so called which rests on the satisfaction of the inclinations however delicate they may be imagined to be can never be adequate to the conception of it for the inclinations change they grow with the indulgence shown them and always leave behind a still greater void than we had thought to fill hence they are always burdensome to a rational being and although he cannot lay them aside they rest from him the wish to be rid of them even an inclination to what is right for example to the beneficence though it may much facilitate the efficacy of the moral maxims cannot produce any for in these all must be directed to the conception of the law as a determining principle if the action is to contain morality and not merely legality inclination is blind and slavish the good sort or not and when morality is in question reason must not play the part merely of guardian to inclination but disregarding it altogether must attend simply to its own interest as pure practical reason this very feeling of compassion and tender sympathy if it precedes the deliberation on the question of duty and becomes a determining principle is even annoying to right thinking persons brings their deliberate maxims into confusion and makes them wish to be delivered from it and to be subject to law-giving reason alone from this we can understand how the consciousness of this faculty of a pure practical reason produces by action, virtue a consciousness of mastery over one's inclinations therefore of independence of them and consequently also of the discontent that always accompanies them and thus a negative satisfaction with one's state that is contentment which is primarily contentment with one's own person freedom itself becomes in this way, namely indirectly, capable of an enjoyment which cannot be called happiness because it does not depend on the positive concurrence of a feeling nor is it strictly speaking bliss since it does not include complete independence of inclinations and wants but it resembles bliss in so far as the determination of one's will at least can hold itself free from their influence and thus at least in its origin this enjoyment is analogous to the self-sufficiency which we can ascribe only to the supreme being from this solution of the antinomy of practical pure reason it follows that in practical principles we may at least conceive as possible a natural and necessary connection between the consciousness of morality and the expectation of a proportionate happiness as its result though it does not follow that we can know how to conceive this connection that on the other hand principles of the pursuit of happiness cannot possibly produce morality that therefore morality is the supreme good as the first condition of the summum bonum while happiness constitutes its second element but only in such a way that it is the morally conditioned but necessary consequence of the former only with this subordination is the summum bonum the whole object of pure practical reason which must necessarily conceive it as possible since it commands us to contribute to the utmost of our power to its realization but since the possibility of such connection of the conditioned with its condition belongs wholly to the and cannot be given according to the laws of the world of sense although the practical consequences of the idea belong to the world of sense namely the actions that aim at realizing the summum bonum we will therefore endeavor to set forth the grounds of that possibility first in respect of what is immediately in our power and then secondly in that which is not in our power but which reason presents to us as the supplement of our impotence for the realization of the summum bonum which by practical principles is necessary end of section 13 section 14 of the critique of practical reason by Immanuel Kant translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott first part elements of pure practical reason book 2 dialectic of pure practical reason chapter 2 of the dialectic of pure reason in defining the conception of the summum bonum 3 of the primacy of pure practical reason in its union with the speculative reason this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Gesino by primacy between two or more things connected by reason I understand the prerogative belonging to one of being the first determining principle in the connection with all the rest in a narrower practical sense it means the prerogative of the interest of one and so far as the interest of the other is subordinated to it while it is not postponed to any other to every faculty of the mind we can attribute an interest that is a principle that contains the condition on which alone the former is called into exercise reason as the faculty of principles determines the interest of all the powers of the mind and is determined by its own the interest of its speculative employment consists in the cognition of the object pushed to the highest a priori principles that of its practical employment in the determination of the will in respect to the final and complete end as to what is necessary for the possibility of any employment of reason at all namely that its principles and affirmations should not contradict one another that constitutes no part of its interest but is the condition of having reason at all it is only its development not mere consistency with itself that is reckoned as its interest if practical reason could not assume or think as given any further than what speculative reason of itself could offer it from its own insight the latter would have the primacy but supposing that it had of itself original a priori principles with which certain theoretical positions were inseparably connected while these were withdrawn from any possible insight of speculative reason which however they must not contradict then the question is which interest is the superior not which must give way for they are not necessarily conflicting whether speculative reason which knows nothing of all that the practical offers for its acceptance should take up these propositions and although they transcend it try to unite them with its own concepts as a foreign possession handed over to it or whether it is justified in obstinately following its own separate interest and according to the canonic of Epicurus rejecting as vain subtlety everything that cannot accredit its objective reality by manifest examples to be shown inexperience even though it should be never so much interwoven with the interest of the practical pure use of reason and in itself contradictory to the theoretical merely because it infringes on the interest of the speculative reason to this extent that it removes the bounds which this letter had to set to itself and gives it up to every nonsense or delusion of imagination in fact so far as practical reason is taken as dependent on pathological conditions that is as merely regulating the inclinations under the sensible principle of happiness we could not require speculative reason to take its principles from such a source Muhammad's paradise or the absorption into the deity of the theosophists and mystics would press their monstrosities on the reason according to the taste of each and one might as well have no reason as surrender it in such fashion to all sorts of dreams but if pure reason of itself can be practical and is actually so as the consciousness of the moral law proves then it is still only one and the same reason which whether in a theoretical or a practical point of view judges according to a priori principles and then it is clear that although it is in the first point of view incompetent to establish certain propositions positively which however do not contradict it then as soon as these propositions are inseparably attached to the practical interest of pure reason it must accept them though it be as something offered to it from a foreign source something which has not grown on its own ground but yet is sufficiently authenticated and it must try to compare and connect them with everything that it has in its power as speculative reason it must remember however that these are not additions to its insight but yet are extensions of its employment in another namely a practical aspect and this is not in the least opposed to its interest which consists in the restriction of wild speculation thus when pure speculative and pure practical reason are combined in one cognition the latter has the primacy provided namely that this combination is not contingent and arbitrary but founded a priori on reason itself and therefore necessary for without this subordination there would arise a conflict of reason with itself since if they were merely co-ordinate the former would close its boundaries strictly and admit nothing from the latter into its domain while the latter would extend its bounds over everything and when its needs required would seek to embrace the former within them nor could we reverse the order and require pure practical reason to be subordinate to the speculative since all interest is ultimately practical and even that of speculative reason is conditional and it is only in the practical employment of reason that it is complete 4. the immortality of the soul as a postulate of pure practical reason the realisation of the summum bonum in the world is the necessary object of a will determinable by moral law but in this will the perfect accordance of the mind with a moral law is the supreme condition of the summum bonum this then must be possible as well as its object since it is contained in the command to promote the latter now the perfect accordance of the will with the moral law is holiness a perfection of which no rational being of the sensible world is capable at any moment of his existence since nevertheless it is required as practically necessary it can only be found in a progress in infinitum towards that perfect accordance and on the principles of pure practical reason it is necessary to assume such a practical progress as the real object of our will now this endless progress is only possible on the supposition of an 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 this immortality being inseparably connected with the moral law is a postulate of pure practical reason by which I mean a theoretical proposition not demonstrable as such but which is an inseparable result of an unconditional a priori practical law this principle of the moral destination of our nature namely that it is only in an endless progress that we can attain perfect accordance with the moral law is of the greatest use not merely for the present purpose of supplementing the impotence of speculative reason but also with respect to religion in default of it either the moral law is quite degraded from its holiness being made out to be indulgent and conformable to our convenience or else men strain their notions of their vocations and their expectations to an unattainable goal hoping to acquire complete holiness of will and so they lose themselves in fanatical theosophic dreams which wholly contradict self-knowledge in both cases the unceasing effort to obey punctually and thoroughly a strict and inflexible command of reason which yet is not ideal but real is only hindered for a rational but finite being the only thing possible is an endless progress from the lower to higher degrees of moral perfection the infinite being to whom the condition of time is nothing season this to us endless succession a whole of accordance with the moral law and the holiness which his command inexorably requires in order to be true to his justice in the share which he assigns to each in the summum bonum is to be found in a single intellectual intuition of the whole existence of rational beings all that can be expected of the creature in respect of the hope of this participation would be the consciousness of his tried character by which from the progress he has hitherto made from the worst to the morally better and the immutability of purpose which has thus become known to him he may hope for a further unbroken continuance of the same however long his existence may last even beyond this life footnote it seems nevertheless impossible for a creature to have the conviction of his unwavering firmness of mind in the progress towards goodness on this account the Christian religion makes it come only from the same spirit that works sanctification that is this firm purpose and with it the consciousness of steadfastness in the moral progress but naturally one who is conscious that he has persevered through a long portion of his life up to the end in the progress to the better and this genuine moral motives may well have the comforting hope though not the certainty that even in an existence prolonged beyond this life he will continue in these principles and although he is never justified here in his own eyes nor can ever hope to be so in the increased perfection of his nature to which he looks forward together with an increase of duties nevertheless in this progress which though it is directed to a goal infinitely remote yet is in God's sight regarded as equivalent to possession he may have a prospect of a blessed future for this is the word that reason employs to designate perfect well-being independent of all contingent causes of the world and which like holiness is an idea that can be contained only in an endless progress and its totality and consequently is never fully attained by a creature end of footnote and thus he may hope not indeed here nor in any imaginable point of his future existence but only in the endlessness of his duration which God alone can survey to be perfectly adequate to his will without indulgence or excuse which do not harmonize with justice end of section 14