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Page 9
SEC_2
SECOND SECTION
TRANSITION FROM POPULAR MORAL PHILOSOPHY
TO THE METAPHYSIC OF MORALS
If we have hitherto drawn our notion of duty from the common use
of our practical reason, it is by no means to be inferred that we have
treated it as an empirical notion. On the contrary, if we attend to
the experience of men's conduct, we meet frequent and, as we ourselves
allow, just complaints that one cannot find a single certain example
of the disposition to act from pure duty. Although many things are
done in conformity with what duty prescribes, it is nevertheless
always doubtful whether they are done strictly from duty, so as to
have a moral worth. Hence there have at all times been philosophers
who have altogether denied that this disposition actually exists at
all in human actions, and have ascribed everything to a more or less
refined self-love. Not that they have on that account questioned the
soundness of the conception of morality; on the contrary, they spoke
with sincere regret of the frailty and corruption of human nature,
which, though noble enough to take its rule an idea so worthy of
respect, is yet weak to follow it and employs reason which ought to
give it the law only for the purpose of providing for the interest
of the inclinations, whether singly or at the best in the greatest
possible harmony with one another.
In fact, it is absolutely impossible to make out by experience
with complete certainty a single case in which the maxim of an action,
however right in itself, rested simply on moral grounds and on the
conception of duty. Sometimes it happens that with the sharpest
self-examination we can find nothing beside the moral principle of
duty which could have been powerful enough to move us to this or
that action and to so great a sacrifice; yet we cannot from this infer
with certainty that it was not really some secret impulse of
self-love, under the false appearance of duty, that was the actual
determining cause of the will. We like them to flatter ourselves by
falsely taking credit for a more noble motive; whereas in fact we
can never, even by the strictest examination, get completely behind
the secret springs of action; since, when the question is of moral
worth, it is not with the actions which we see that we are
concerned, but with those inward principles of them which we do not
see.
Moreover, we cannot better serve the wishes of those who ridicule
all morality as a mere chimera of human imagination over stepping
itself from vanity, than by conceding to them that notions of duty
must be drawn only from experience (as from indolence, people are
ready to think is also the case with all other notions); for or is
to prepare for them a certain triumph. I am willing to admit out of
love of humanity that even most of our actions are correct, but if
we look closer at them we everywhere come upon the dear self which
is always prominent, and it is this they have in view and not the
strict command of duty which would often require self-denial.
Without being an enemy of virtue, a cool observer, one that does not
mistake the wish for good, however lively, for its reality, may
sometimes doubt whether true virtue is actually found anywhere in
the world, and this especially as years increase and the judgement
is partly made wiser by experience and partly, also, more acute in
observation. This being so, nothing can secure us from falling away
altogether from our ideas of duty, or maintain in the soul a
well-grounded respect for its law, but the clear conviction that
although there should never have been actions which really sprang from
such pure sources, yet whether this or that takes place is not at
all the question; but that reason of itself, independent on all
experience, ordains what ought to take place, that accordingly actions
of which perhaps the world has hitherto never given an example, the
feasibility even of which might be very much doubted by one who founds
everything on experience, are nevertheless inflexibly commanded by
reason; that, e.g., even though there might never yet have been a
sincere friend, yet not a whit the less is pure sincerity in
friendship required of every man, because, prior to all experience,
this duty is involved as duty in the idea of a reason determining
the will by a priori principles.
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