For in this case the question is not only to know what it is a duty to
do (a thing which on account of the ends that all men naturally have
can be easily decided), but the chief point is the inner principle
of the will namely that the consciousness of this duty be also the
spring of action, in order that we may be able to say of the man who
joins to his knowledge this principle of wisdom that he is a practical
philosopher.
Now in this philosophy (of ethics) it seems contrary to the idea
of it that we should go back to metaphysical elements in order to make
the notion of duty purified from everything empirical (from every
feeling) a motive of action. For what sort of notion can we form of
the mighty power and herculean strength which would be sufficient to
overcome the vice-breeding inclinations, if Virtue is to borrow her
"arms from the armoury of metaphysics," which is a matter of
speculation that only few men can handle? Hence all ethical teaching
in lecture rooms, pulpits, and popular books, when it is decked out
with fragments of metaphysics, becomes ridiculous. But it is not,
therefore, useless, much less ridiculous, to trace in metaphysics
the first principles of ethics; for it is only as a philosopher that
anyone can reach the first principles of this conception of duty,
otherwise we could not look for either certainty or purity in the
ethical teaching. To rely for this reason on a certain feeling
which, on account of the effect expected from it, is called moral,
may, perhaps, even satisfy the popular teacher, provided he desires as
the criterion of a moral duty to consider the problem: "If everyone in
every case made your maxim the universal law, how could this law be
consistent with itself?" But if it were merely feeling that made it
our duty to take this principle as a criterion, then this would not be
dictated by reason, but only adopted instinctively and therefore
blindly.
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