VIII. Exposition of the Duties of Virtue as Intermediate Duties
(1) OUR OWN PERFECTION as an end which is also a duty
(a) Physical perfection; that is, cultivation of all our faculties
generally for the promotion of the ends set before us by reason.
That this is a duty, and therefore an end in itself, and that the
effort to effect this even without regard to the advantage that it
secures us, is based, not on a conditional (pragmatic), but an
unconditional (moral) imperative, may be seen from the following
consideration. The power of proposing to ourselves an end is the
characteristic of humanity (as distinguished from the brutes). With
the end of humanity in our own person is therefore combined the
rational will, and consequently the duty of deserving well of humanity
by culture generally, by acquiring or advancing the power to carry out
all sorts of possible ends, so far as this power is to be found in
man; that is, it is a duty to cultivate the crude capacities of our
nature, since it is by that cultivation that the animal is raised to
man, therefore it is a duty in itself.
This duty, however, is merely ethical, that is, of indeterminate
obligation. No principle of reason prescribes how far one must go in
this effort (in enlarging or correcting his faculty of
understanding, that is, in acquisition of knowledge or technical
capacity); and besides the difference in the circumstances into
which men may come makes the choice of the kind of employment for
which he should cultivate his talent very arbitrary.
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