To every duty corresponds a right of action (facultas moral is
generatim), but all duties do not imply a corresponding right
(facultas juridica) of another to compel any one, but only the
duties called legal duties. Similarly to all ethical obligation
corresponds the notion of virtue, but it does not follow that all
ethical duties are duties of virtue. Those, in fact, are not so
which do not concern so much a certain end (matter, object of the
elective will), but merely that which is formal in the moral
determination of the will (e.g., that the dutiful action must also
be done from duty). It is only an end which is also duty that can be
called a duty of virtue. Hence there are several of the latter kind
(and thus there are distinct virtues); on the contrary, there is
only one duty of the former kind, but it is one which is valid for all
actions (only one virtuous disposition).
The duty of virtue is essentially distinguished from the duty of
justice in this respect; that it is morally possible to be
externally compelled to the latter, whereas the former rests on free
self-constraint only. For finite holy beings (which cannot even be
tempted to the violation of duty) there is no doctrine of virtue,
but only moral philosophy, the latter being an autonomy of practical
reason, whereas the former is also an autocracy of it. That is, it
includes a consciousness- not indeed immediately perceived, but
rightly concluded, from the moral categorical imperative- of the power
to become master of one's inclinations which resist the law; so that
human morality in its highest stage can yet be nothing more than
virtue; even if it were quite pure (perfectly free from the
influence of a spring foreign to duty), a state which is poetically
personified under the name of the wise man (as an ideal to which one
should continually approximate).
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