BOOK ONE
[15]
CONCERNING THE INDWELLING OF THE EVIL
PRINCIPLE WITH THE GOOD, OR, ON THE
RADICAL EVIL IN HUMAN NATURE
That "the world lieth in evil".1 is a plaint as old as history, old even
as the older art, poetry; indeed, as old as that oldest of all fictions, the
religion of priest-craft. All agree that the world began in a good estate,
whether in a Golden Age, a life in Eden, or a yet more happy community
with celestial beings. But they represent that this happiness vanished like a
dream and that a Fall into evil (moral evil, with which physical evil ever
went hand in hand) presently hurried mankind from bad to worse with
accelerated descent;* so that now (this "now" is also as old as history) we
live in the final age, with the Last Day and the destruction of the world at
hand. In some parts of India the Judge and Destroyer of the world, Rudra
(sometimes called Siwa or Siva), already is worshipped as the reigning
God--Vishnu, the Sustainer of the world, having some centuries ago grown
weary and renounced the supreme authority which he inherited from
Brahma, the Creator. More modern, though far less prevalent, is the
contrasted optimistic belief, which indeed has gained a following solely
among philosophers and, of late, especially among those interested in
education--the belief that the world steadily (though almost imperceptibly)
forges in the other direction, to wit, from bad to better; at least that the
predisposition to such a movement is discoverable in human nature. If this
belief, however, is meant to apply to moral goodness and badness (not
simply to the process of civilization), it has certainly not been deduced from
experience; the history of all times cries too loudly against it. The belief, we
[16]
may presume, is a well-intentioned assumption of the moralist, from Seneca
to Rousseau, designed to encourage the sedulous cultivation of that seed of
goodness which perhaps lies in us--if, indeed, we can count on any such
natural basis of goodness in man. We may note that since we take for
granted that man is by nature sound of body (as at birth he usually is), no
reason appears why, by nature, his soul should not be deemed similarly
healthy and free from evil. Is not nature herself, then, inclined to lend her
aid to developing in us this moral predisposition to goodness? In the words
of Seneca: Sanabilibus grotamus malis, nosque in rectum genitos natura, si
sanari velimus, adiuvat.1
But since it well may be that both sides have erred in their reading of
experience, the question arises whether a middle ground may not at least be
possible, namely, that man as a species is neither good nor bad, or at all
events that he is as much the one as the other, partly good, partly bad. We
call a man evil, however, not because he performs actions that are evil
(contrary to law) but because these actions are of such a nature that we may
infer from them the presence in him of evil maxims. In and through
experience we can observe actions contrary to law, and we can observe (at
least in ourselves) that they are performed in the consciousness that they are
unlawful; but a man's maxims, sometimes2 even his own, are not thus
observable; consequently the judgment that the agent is an evil man cannot
be made with certainty if grounded on experience. In order, then, to call a
man evil, it would have to be possible a priori to infer from several evil acts
done with consciousness of their evil, or from one such act, an underlying
evil maxim; and further, from this maxim to infer the presence in the agent
of an underlying common ground, itself a maxim, of all particular morally-
evil maxims.
Lest difficulty at once be encountered in the expression nature,
which, if it meant (as it usually does) the opposite of freedom as a basis of
action, would flatly contradict the predicates morally good or evil, let it be
noted that by "nature of man" we here intend only the subjective ground of
the exercise (under objective moral laws) of man's freedom in general; this
ground--whatever is its character--is the necessary antecedent of every act
apparent to the senses. But this subjective ground, again, must itself always
be
[17]
an expression1 of freedom (for otherwise the use or abuse of man's power
of choicew in respect of the moral law could not be imputed to him nor
could the good or bad in him be called moral). Hence the source of evil
cannot lie in an object determining the willw through inclination, nor yet in a
natural impulse; it can lie only in a rule made by the willw for the use of its
freedom, that is, in a maxim. But now it must not be considered permissible
to inquire into the subjective ground in man of the adoption of this maxim
rather than of its opposite. If this ground itself were not ultimately a maxim,
but a mere natural impulse, it would be possible to trace the use of our
freedom wholly to determination by natural causes; this, however, is
contradictory to the very notion of freedom. When we say, then, Man is by
nature good, or, Man is by nature evil, this means only that there is in him
an ultimate ground (inscrutable to us)* of the adoption of good maxims or
of evil maxims (i.e., those contrary to law), and this he has, being a man;
and hence he thereby expresses the character of his species.
We shall say, therefore, of the character (good or evil)
distinguishing man from other possible rational beings, that it is innate in
him. Yet in doing so we shall ever take the position that nature is not to bear
the blame (if it is evil) or take the credit (if it is good), but that man himself
is its author. But since the ultimate ground of the adoption of our maxims,
which must itself lie in free choicew, cannot be a fact revealed in
experience, it follows that the good or evil in man (as the ultimate subjective
ground of the adoption of this or that maxim with reference to the moral
law) is termed innate only in this sense, that it is posited as the ground
antecedent to every use of freedom in experience (in earliest youth as far
back as birth) and is thus conceived of as present in man at birth--though
birth need not be the cause of it.
Observation
The conflict between the two hypotheses presented above is based
on a disjunctive proposition: Man is (by nature) either morally good or
morally evil. It might easily occur to any one,
[18]
however, to ask whether this disjunction is valid, and whether some might
not assert that man is by nature neither of the two, others, that man is at
once both, in some respects good, in other respects evil. Experience actually
seems to substantiate the middle ground between the two extremes.
It is, however, of great consequence to ethics in general to avoid
admitting, so long as it is possible, of anything morally intermediate,
whether in actions (adiophora) or in human characters; for with such
ambiguity all maxims are in danger of forfeiting their precision and stability.
Those who are partial to this strict mode of thinking are usually called
rigorists (a name which is intended to carry reproach, but which actually
praises); their opposites may be called latitudinarians. These latter, again,
are either latitudinarians of neutrality, whom we may call indifferentists, or
else latitudinarians of coalition, whom we may call syncretists.*
According to the rigoristic diagnosis,** the answer to the question
[19]
at issue rests upon the observation, of great importance to morality, that
freedom of the willw is of a wholly unique nature in that an incentive can
determine the willw to an action only so far as the individual has
incorporated it into his maxim (has made it the general rule in accordance
with which he will conduct himself); only thus can an incentive, whatever it
may be, co-exist with the absolute spontaneity of the willw (i.e., freedom).
But the moral law, in the judgment of reason, is in itself an incentive, and
[20]
whoever makes it his maxim is morally good. If, now, this law does not
determine a person's willw in the case of an action which has reference to
the law, an incentive contrary to it must influence his choicew; and since, by
hypothesis, this can only happen when a man adopts this incentive (and
thereby the deviation from the moral law) into his maxim (in which case he
is an evil man) it follows that his disposition in respect to the moral law is
never indifferent, never neither good nor evil.
Neither can a man be morally good in some ways and at the same
time morally evil in others. His being good in one way means that he has
incorporated the moral law into his maxim; were he, therefore, at the same
time evil in another way, while his maxim would be universal as based on
the moral law of obedience to duty, which is essentially single and
universal, it would at the same time be only particular; but this is a
contradiction.*
To have a good or an evil disposition as an inborn natural
constitution does not here mean that it has not been acquired by the to man
who harbors it, that he is not author of it, but rather, that it has not been
acquired in time (that he has always been good, or evil, from his youth up).
The disposition, i.e., the ultimate subjective ground of the adoption of
maxims, can be one only and applies universally to the whole use of
freedom. Yet this disposition itself must have been adopted by free
choicew, for otherwise it could not be imputed. But the subjective ground
or cause of this adoption cannot further be known (though it is inevitable
that we should inquire into it),1 since otherwise still another maxim would
have to be adduced in which this disposition must have been
[21]
incorporated, a maxim which itself in turn must have its ground. Since,
therefore, we are unable to derive this disposition, or rather its ultimate
ground, from any original act of the willw in time, we call it a property of
the willw which belongs to it by nature (although actually the disposition is
grounded in freedom). Further, the man of whom we say, "He is by nature
good or evil," is to be understood not as the single individual (for then one
man could be considered as good, by nature, another as evil), but as the
entire race; that we are entitled so to do can only be proved when
anthropological research shows that the evidence, which justifies us in
attributing to a man one of these characters as innate, is such as to give no
ground for excepting anyone, and that the attribution therefore holds for the
race.
I. Concerning the Original Predisposition to Good in Human Nature
We may conveniently divide this predisposition, with respect to
function, into three divisions, to be considered as elements in the fixed
character and destiny1 of man:
(1) The predisposition to animality in man, taken as a living being;
(2) The predisposition to humanity in man, taken as a living and at
the same time a rational being;
(3) The predisposition to personality in man, taken as a rational and
at the same time an accountable being.*
[22]
1. The predisposition to animality in mankind may be brought under
the general title of physical and purely mechanical self-love, wherein no
reason is demanded. It is threefold: first, for self-preservation; second, for
the propagation of the species, through the sexual impulse, and for the care
of offspring so begotten; and third, for community with other men, i.e., the
social impulse. On these three stems can be grafted all kinds of vices
(which, however, do not spring from this predisposition itself as a root).
They may be termed vices of the coarseness1 of nature, and in their greatest
deviation from natural purposes are called the beastly vices of gluttony and
drunkenness,2 lasciviousness and wild lawlessness (in relation to other
men).
2. The predisposition3 to humanity can be brought under the general
title of a self-love which is physical and yet compares (for which reason is
required); that is to say, we judge ourselves happy or unhappy only by
making comparison with others. Out of this self-love springs the inclination
to acquire worth in the opinion of others. This is originally a desire merely
for equality, to allow no one superiority above oneself, bound up with a
constant care lest others strive to attain such superiority; but from this arises
gradually the unjustifiable craving to win it for oneself over others. Upon
this twin stem of jealousy and rivalry may be grafted the very great vices of
secret and open animosity against all whom we look upon as not belonging
to us--vices, however, which really do not sprout of themselves from nature
as their root; rather are they inclinations, aroused in us by the anxious
endeavors of others to attain a hated superiority over us, to attain for
ourselves as a measure of precaution and for the sake of safety such a
position over others. For nature, indeed, wanted to use the idea of such
rivalry (which in itself does not exclude mutual love) only as a spur to
culture.4 Hence the vices which are grafted upon this inclination might be
their termed vices of culture;4 in highest degree of malignancy, as, for
example, in envy, ingratitude, spitefulness, etc. (where they are simply the
idea of a maximum of evil going beyond what is human), they can be called
the diabolical vices.
3. The predisposition to personality is the capacity for respect
[23]
for the moral law as in itself a sufficient incentive of the will.w This
capacity for simple respect for the moral law within us would thus be moral
feeling, which in and through itself does not constitute an end of the natural
predisposition except so far as it is the motivating force of the will.w Since
this is possible only when the free willw incorporates such moral feeling
into its maxim, the property of such a willw is good character. The latter,
like every character of the free willw, is something which can only be
acquired; its possibility, however, demands the presence in our nature of a
predisposition on which it is absolutely impossible to graft anything evil.
We cannot rightly call the idea of the moral law, with the respect which is
inseparable from it, a predisposition to personality; it is personality itself
(the idea of humanity considered quite intellectually). But the subjective
ground for the adoption into our maxims of this respect as a motivating
force seems to be an adjunct to our personality, and thus to deserve the
name of a predisposition to its furtherance.
If we consider the three predispositions named, in terms of the
conditions of their possibility, we find that the first requires no reason, the
second is based on practical reason, but a reason thereby subservient to
other incentives, while the third alone is rooted in reason which is practical
of itself, that is, reason which dictates laws unconditionally. All of these
predispositions are not only good in negative fashion (in that they do not
contradict the moral law); they are also predispositions toward good (they
enjoin the observance of the law). They are original, for they are bound up
with the possibility of human nature. Man can indeed use the first two
contrary to their ends, but he can extirpate none of them. By the
predispositions of a being we understand not only its constituent elements
which are necessary to it, but also the forms of their combination, by which
the being is what it is. They are original if they are involved necessarily in
the possibility of such a being, but contingent if it is possible for the being
to exist of itself without them. Finally, let it be noted that here we treat only
those predispositions which have immediate reference to the faculty of
desire and the exercise of the willw.
II. Concerning the Propensity to Evil in Human Nature
By propensity (propensio) I understand the subjective ground of the
possibility of an inclination (habitual craving,
[24]
concupiscentia)1 so far as mankind in general is liable to it. A propensity is
distinguished from a predisposition by the fact that although it can indeed be
innate, it ought not to be represented merely thus; for it can also be regarded
as having been acquired (if it is good), or brought by man upon himself (if
it is evil). Here, however, we are speaking only of the propensity to
genuine, that is, moral evil; for since such evil is possible only as a
determination of the free willw, and since the willw can be appraised as
good or evil only by means of its maxims, this propensity to evil must
consist in the subjective ground of the possibility of the deviation of the
maxims from the moral law. If, then, this propensity can be considered as
belonging universally to mankind (and hence as part of the character of the
race), it may be called a natural propensity in man to evil. We may add
further that the will'sw capacity or incapacity, arising from this natural
propensity, to adopt or not to adopt the moral law into its maxim, may be
called a good or an evil heart.
In this capacity for evil there can be distinguished three distinct
degrees. First, there is the weakness of the human heart in the general
observance of adopted maxims, or in other words, the frailty of human
nature; second, the propensity for mixing unmoral with moral motivating
causes (even when it is done with good intent and under maxims of the
good), that is, impurity;3 third, the propensity to adopt evil maxims, that is,
the wickedness of human nature or of the human heart.
First: the frailty (fragilitas) of human nature is expressed even
[25]
in the complaint of an Apostle, "What I would, that I do not!"1 In other
words, I adopt the good (the law) into the maxim of my willw, but this
good, which objectively, in its ideal conception2 (in thesi), is an irresistible
incentive, is subjectively (in hypothesi), when the maxim is to be followed,
the weaker (in comparison with inclination).
Second: the impurity (impuritas, improbitas) of the human heart
consists in this, that although the maxim is indeed good in respect of its
object (the intended observance of the law) and perhaps even strong enough
for practice, it is yet not purely moral; that is, it has not, as it should have,
adopted the law alone as its all-sufficient incentive: instead, it usually
(perhaps, every time) stands in need of other incentives beyond this, in
determining the willw to do what duty demands; in other words, actions
called for by duty are done not purely for duty's sake.
Third: the wickedness (vitiositas, pravitas) or, if you like, the
corruption (corruptio) of the human heart is the propensity of the willw to
maxims which neglect the incentives springing from the moral law in favor
of others which are not moral. It may also be called the perversity
(perversitas) of the human heart, for it reverses the ethical order [of priority]
among the incentives of a free willw; and although conduct which is
lawfully good (i.e., legal) may be found with it, yet the cast of mind is
thereby corrupted at its root (so far as the moral disposition is concerned),
and the man is hence designated as evil.
It will be remarked that this propensity to evil is here ascribed (as
regards conduct) to men in general, even to the best of them; this must be
the case if it is to be proved that the propensity to evil in mankind is
universal, or, what here comes to the same thing, that it is woven into
human nature.
There is no difference, however, as regards conformity of conduct
to the moral law, between a man of good morals (bene moratus) and a
morally good man (moraliter bonus)--at least there ought to be no
difference, save that the conduct of the one has not always, perhaps has
never, the law as its sole and supreme incentive while the conduct of the
other has it always. Of the former it can be said: He obeys the law according
to the letter (that is, his conduct conforms to what the law commands); but
of the second: He
[26]
obeys the law according to the spirit (the spirit of the moral law consisting
in this, that the law is sufficient in itself as an incentive). Whatever is not of
this faith is sin1 as regards cast of mind). For when incentives other than
the law itself (such as ambition, self-love in general, yes, even a kindly
instinct such as sympathy) are necessary to determine the willw to conduct
conformable to the law, it is merely accidental that these causes coincide
with the law, for they could equally well incite its violation. The maxim,
then, in terms of whose goodness all moral worth of the individual must be
appraised, is thus contrary to the law, and the man, despite all his good
deeds, is nevertheless evil.
The following explanation is also necessary in order to define the
concept of this propensity. Every propensity is either physical, i.e.,
pertaining to the willw of man as a natural being, or moral, i.e., pertaining
to his willw as a moral being. In the first sense there is no propensity to
moral evil, for such a propensity must spring from freedom; and a physical
propensity (grounded in sensuous2 impulses) towards any use of freedom
whatsoever--whether for good or bad--is a contradiction. Hence a
propensity to evil can inhere only in the moral capacity of the willw. But
nothing is morally evil (i.e., capable of being imputed) but that which is our
own act. On the other hand, by the concept of a propensity we understand a
subjective determining ground of the willw which precedes all acts and
which, therefore, is itself not an act. Hence in the concept of a simple
propensity to evil there would be a contradiction were it not possible to take
the word "act" in two meanings, both of which are reconcilable with the
concept of freedom. The term "act" can apply in general to that exercise of
freedom whereby the supreme maxim (in harmony with the law or contrary
to it) it is adopted by the willw, but also to the exercise of freedom whereby
the actions themselves (considered materially, i.e., with reference to the
objects of volitionw) are performed in accordance with that maxim. The
propensity to evil, then, is an act in the first sense (peccatum originarium),
and at the same time the formal ground of all unlawful conduct in the second
sense, which latter, considered materially, violates the law and is termed
vice (peccatum derivatum); and the first offense remains, even though the
second (from incentives which do not subsist in the law itself) may be
repeatedly avoided. The former is intelligible1
[27]
action, cognizable by means of pure reason alone, apart from every
temporal condition; the latter is sensible1 action, empirical, given in time
(factum phÏnomenon). The former, particularly when compared with the
latter, is entitled a simple propensity and innate, [first] because it cannot be
eradicated (since for such eradication the highest maxim would have to be
that of the good--whereas in this propensity it already has been postulated as
evil), but chiefly because we can no more assign a further cause for the
corruption in us by evil of just this highest maxim, although this is our own
action, than we can assign a cause for any fundamental attribute belonging
to our nature. Now it can be understood, from what has just been said, why
it was that in this section we sought, at the very first, the three sources of
the morally evil solely in what, according to laws of freedom, touches the
ultimate ground of the adoption or the observance of our maxims, and not in
what touches sensibility2 (regarded as receptivity).
III. Man is Evil by Nature
Vitiis nemo sine nascitur.--Horace3
In view of what has been said above, the proposition, Man is evil,
can mean only, He is conscious of the moral law but has nevertheless
adopted into his maxim the (occasional) deviation therefrom. He is evil by
nature, means but this, that evil can be predicated of man as a species; not
that such a quality can be inferred from the concept of his species (that is, of
man in general)--for then it would be necessary; but rather that from what
we know of man through experience we cannot judge otherwise of him, or,
that we may presuppose evil to be subjectively necessary to every man,
even to the best. Now this propensity must itself be considered as morally
evil, yet not as a natural predisposition but rather as something that can be
imputed to man, and consequently it must consist in maxims of the willw
which are contrary to the law. Further, for the sake of freedom, these
maxims must in themselves be considered contingent, a circumstance
which, on the other hand, will not tally with the universality of this evil
unless the ultimate subjective ground of all maxims somehow or
[28]
other is entwined with and, as it were, rooted in humanity itself. Hence we
can call this a natural propensity to evil, and as we must, after all, ever hold
man himself responsible for it, we can further call it a radical innate evil in
human nature (yet none the less brought upon us by ourselves).
That such a corrupt1 propensity must indeed be rooted in man need
not be formally proved in view of the multitude of crying examples which
experience of the actions of men puts before our eyes. If we wish to draw
our examples from that state in which various philosophers hoped
preeminently to discover the natural goodliness of human nature, namely,
from the so-called state of nature, we need but compare with this hypothesis
the scenes of unprovoked cruelty in the murder-dramas enacted in Tofoa,
New Zealand, and in the Navigator Islands, and the unending cruelty (of
which Captain Hearne2 tells) in the wide wastes of northwestern America,
cruelty from which, indeed, not a soul reaps the smallest benefit;* and we
have vices of barbarity3 more than sufficient to draw us from such an
opinion. If, however, we incline to the opinion that human nature can better
be known in the civilized state (in which its predispositions can more
completely develop), we must listen to a long melancholy litany of
indictments against humanity: of secret falsity even in the closest friendship,
so that a limit upon trust in the mutual confidences of even the best friends
is reckoned a universal maxim of prudence in intercourse; of a propensity to
hate him to whom one is indebted, for which
[29]
a benefactor must always be prepared; of a hearty well-wishing which yet
allows of the remark that "in the misfortunes of our best friends there is
something which is not altogether displeasing to us" ;1 and of many other
vices still concealed under the appearance of virtue, to say nothing of the
vices of those who do not conceal them, for we are content to call him good
who is a man bad in a way common to all; and we shall have enough of the
vices of culture and civilization (which are the most offensive of all) to make
us rather turn away our eyes from the conduct of men lest we ourselves
contract another vice, misanthropy. But if we are not yet content, we need
but contemplate a state which is compounded in strange fashion of both the
others, that is, the international situation,2 where civilized nations stand
towards each other in the relation obtaining in the barbarous state of nature
(a state of continuous readiness for war), a state, moreover, from which
they have taken fixedly into their heads never to depart. We then become
aware of the fundamental principles of the great societies called states --
principles which flatly contradict their public pronouncements but can never
be laid aside, and which no philosopher has yet been able to bring into
agreement with morality. Nor (sad to say) has any philosopher been able to
propose
[30]
better principles which at the same time can be brought into harmony with
human nature. The result is that the philosophical millenium, which hopes
for a state of perpetual peace based on a league of peoples, a world-
republic, even as the theological millenium, which tarries for the completed
moral improvement of the entire human race, is universally ridiculed as a
wild fantasy.
Now the ground of this evil (1) cannot be placed, as is so commonly
done, in man's sensuous nature 1 and the natural inclinations arising
therefrom. For not only are these not directly related to evil (rather do they
afford the occasion for what the moral disposition in its power can manifest,
namely, virtue); we must not even be considered responsible for their
existence (we cannot be, for since they are implanted in us we are not their
authors). We are accountable, however, for the propensity to evil, which,
as it affects the morality of the subject, is to be found in him as a free-acting
being and for which it must be possible to hold him accountable as the
offender--this, too, despite the fact that this propensity is so deeply rooted
in the willw that we are forced to say that it is to be found in man by nature.
Neither can the ground of this evil (2) be placed in a corruption of the
morally legislative reason--as if reason could destroy the authority of the
very law which is its own, or deny the obligation arising therefrom; this is
absolutely impossible. To conceive of oneself as a freely acting being and
yet as exempt from the law which is appropriate to such a being (the moral
law) would be tantamount to conceiving a cause operating without any laws
whatsoever (for determination according to natural laws is excluded by the
fact of freedom); this is a self-contradiction. In seeking, therefore, a ground
of the morally-evil in man, [we find that] sensuous nature comprises too
little, for when the incentives which can spring from freedom are taken
away, man is reduced to a merely animal being. On the other hand, a reason
exempt from the moral law, a malignant reason as it were (a thoroughly evil
will2), comprises too much, for thereby opposition to the law would itself
be set up as an incentive (since in the absence of all incentives the willw
cannot be determined), and thus the subject would be made a devilish being.
Neither of these designations is applicable to man.
But even if the existence of this propensity to evil in human nature
can be demonstrated by experiential proofs of the real
[31]
opposition, in time, of man's willw to the law, such proofs do not teach us
the essential character of that propensity or the ground of this opposition.
Rather, because this character concerns a relation of the willw, which is free
(and the concept of which is therefore not empirical), to the moral law as an
incentive (the concept of which, likewise, is purely intellectual), it must be
apprehended a priori through the concept of evil, so far as evil is possible
under the laws of freedom (of obligation and accountability). This concept
may be developed in the following manner.
Man (even the most wicked) does not, under any maxim
whatsoever, repudiate the moral law in the manner of a rebel (renouncing
obedience to it). The law, rather, forces itself upon him irresistibly by virtue
of his moral predisposition; and were no other incentive working in
opposition, he would adopt the law into his supreme maxim as the sufficient
determining ground of his willw; that is, he would be morally good. But by
virtue of an equally innocent natural predisposition he depends upon the
incentives of his sensuous nature and adopts them also (in accordance with
the subjective principle of self-love) into his maxim. If he took the latter into
his maxim as in themselves wholly adequate to the determination of the
willw, without troubling himself about the moral law (which, after all, he
does have in him), he would be morally evil. Now, since he naturally
adopts both into his maxim, and since, further, he would find either, if it
were alone, adequate in itself for the determining of the will,1 it follows that
if the difference between the maxims amounted merely to the difference
between the two incentives (the content of the maxims), that is, if it were
merely a question as to whether the law or the sensuous impulse were to
furnish the incentive, man would be at once good and evil: this, however,
(as we saw in the Introduction) is a contradiction. Hence the distinction
between a good man and one who is evil cannot lie in the difference
between the incentives which they adopt into their maxim (not in the content
of the maxim), but rather must depend upon subordination (the form of the
maxim), i.e., which of the two incentives he makes the condition of the
other. Consequently man (even the best) is evil only in that he reverses the
moral order of the incentives when he adopts them into his maxim. He
adopts, indeed, the moral law along with the law of self-love; yet when he
becomes aware that they cannot remain on a par with each other but that one
must be subordinated
[32]
to the other as its supreme condition, he makes the incentive of self-love and
its inclinations the condition of obedience to the moral law; whereas, on the
contrary, the latter, as the supreme condition of the satisfaction of the
former, ought to have been adopted into the universal maxim of the willw as
the sole incentive.
Yet, even with this reversal of the ethical order of the incentives in
and through his maxim, a man's actions still may prove to be as much in
conformity to the law as if they sprang from true basic principles. This
happens when reason employs the unity of the maxims in general, a unity
which is inherent in the moral law, merely to bestow upon the incentives of
inclination, under the name of happiness, a unity of maxims which
otherwise they cannot have. (For example, truthfulness, if adopted as a
basic principle, delivers us from the anxiety of making our lies agree with
one another and of not being entangled by their serpent coils.) The empirical
character is then good, but the intelligible character is still evil.
Now if a propensity to this1 does lie in human nature, there is in
man a natural propensity to evil; and since this very propensity must in the
end be sought in a willw which is free, and can therefore be imputed, it is
morally evil. This evil is radical, because it corrupts the ground of all
maxims; it is, moreover, as a natural propensity, inextirpable by human
powers, since extirpation could occur only through good maxims, and
cannot take place when the ultimate subjective ground of all maxims is
postulated as corrupt; yet at the same time it must be possible to overcome
it, since it is found in man, a being whose actions are free.
We are not, then, to call the depravity of human nature wickedness 2
taking the word in its strict sense as a disposition (the subjective principle of
the maxims) to adopt evil3 as evil into our maxim as our incentives (for that
is diabolical); we should rather term it the perversity of the heart, which,
then, because of what follows from it, is also called an evil heart. Such a
heart may coexist with a will which in general4 is good: it arises from the
frailty of human nature, the lack of sufficient strength to follow out the
principles it has chosen for itself, joined with its impurity, the failure to
distinguish the incentives (even of well-intentioned
[33]
actions) from each other by the gauge of morality; and so at last, if the
extreme is reached, [it results] from looking only to the squaring of these
actions with the law and not to the derivation of them from the law as the
sole motivating spring. Now even though there does not always follow
therefrom an unlawful act and a propensity thereto, namely, vice, yet the
mode of thought which sets down the absence of such vice as being
conformity of the disposition to the law of duty (as being virtue)--since in
this case no attention whatever is paid to the motivating forces in the maxim
but only to the observance of the letter of the law--itself deserves to be
called a radical perversity in the human heart.
This innate guilt (reatus), which is so denominated because it may be
discerned in man as early as the first manifestations of the exercise of
freedom, but which, none the less, must have originated in freedom and
hence can be imputed,--this guilt may be judged in its first two stages (those
of frailty and impurity) to be unintentional guilt (culpa), but in the third to be
deliberate guilt (dolus) and to display in its character a certain
insidiousness1 of the human heart (dolus malus), which deceives itself in
regard to its own good and evil dispositions, and, if only its conduct has not
evil consequences--which it might well have, with such maxims--does not
trouble itself about its disposition but rather considers itself justified before
the law. Thence arises the peace of conscience of so many men
(conscientious in their own esteem) when, in the course of conduct
concerning which they did not take the law into their counsel, or at least in
which the law was not the supreme consideration, they merely elude evil
consequences by good fortune. They may even picture themselves as
meritorious, feeling themselves guilty of no such offenses as they see others
burdened with; nor do they ever inquire whether good luck should not have
the credit, or whether by reason of the cast of mind which they could
discover, if they only would, in their own inmost nature, they would not
have practised similar vices, had not inability, temperament, training, and
circumstances of time and place which serve to tempt one (matters which are
not imputable), kept them out of the way of those vices. This dishonesty,
by which we humbug ourselves and which thwarts the establishing of a true
moral disposition in us, extends itself outwardly also to falsehood and
deception of others. If this is not to be termed wickedness, it at least
deserves the name of worthlessness, and is an element in the radical
[34]
evil of human nature, which (inasmuch as it puts out of tune the moral
capacity to judge what a man is to be taken for, and renders wholly
uncertain both internal and external attribution of responsibility) constitutes
the foul taint in our race. So long as we do not eradicate it, it prevents the
seed of goodness from developing as it otherwise would.
A member of the British Parliament1 once exclaimed, in the heat of
debate, "Every man has his price, for which he sells himself." If this is true
(a question to which each must make his own answer), if there is no virtue
for which some temptation cannot be found capable of overthrowing it, and
if whether the good or evil spirit wins us over to his party depends merely
on which bids the most and pays us most promptly, then certainly it holds
true of men universally,2 as the apostle said:3 "They are all under sin,--
there is none righteous (in the spirit of the law), no, not one."*
IV. Concerning the Origin of Evil in Human Nature
An origin (a first origin) is the derivation of an effect from its first
cause, that is, from that cause which is not in turn the effect of another
cause of the same kind. It can be considered either as an origin in reason or
as an origin in time. In the former sense, regard is had only to the existence
of the effect; in the latter, to its
[35]
occurrence, and hence it is related as an event to its first cause in time. If an
effect is referred to a cause to which it is bound under the laws of freedom,
as is true in the case of moral evil, then the determination of the willw to the
production of this effect is conceived of as bound up with its determining
ground not in time but merely in rational representation; such an effect
cannot be derived from any preceding state whatsoever. Yet derivation of
this sort is always necessary when an evil action, as an event in the world,
is referred to its natural cause. To seek the temporal origin of free acts as
such (as though they were natural effects) is thus a contradiction. Hence it is
also a contradiction to seek the temporal origin of man's moral character,1
so far as it is considered as contingent, since this character signifies the
ground of the exercise of freedom; this ground (like the determining ground
of the free willw generally) must be sought in purely rational
representations.
However the origin of moral evil in man is constituted, surely of all
the explanations of the spread and propagation of this evil through all
members and generations of our race, the most inept is that which describes
it as descending to us as an inheritance from our first parents; for one can
say of moral evil precisely what the poet said of good:2 genus et proavos, et
quae non fecimus ipsi, vix ea nostra puto.* Yet we should note that, in our
search for the origin of this evil, we do not deal first of all with the
propensity thereto (as peccatum in potentia); rather do we direct our
attention to the actual evil of given actions with respect to its inner
possibility--to what must take place within the willw if evil is to be
performed.
[36]
In the search for the rational origin of evil actions, every such action
must be regarded as though the individual had fallen into it directly from a
state of innocence. For whatever his previous deportment may have been,
whatever natural causes may have been influencing him, and whether these
causes were to be found within him or outside him, his action is yet free and
determined by none of these causes; hence it can and must always be judged
as an original use of his willw. He should have refrained from that action,
whatever his temporal circumstances and entanglements; for through no
cause in the world can he cease to be a freely acting being. Rightly is it said
that to a man's account are set down the consequences arising from his
former free acts which were contrary to the law; but this merely amounts to
saying that man need not involve himself in the evasion of seeking to
establish whether or not these consequences are free, since there exists in
the admittedly free action, which was their cause, ground sufficient for
holding him accountable. However evil a man has been up to the very
moment of an impending free act (so that evil has actually become custom or
second nature) it was not only his duty to have been better [in the past], it is
now still his duty to better himself. To do so must be within his power, and
if he does not do so, he is susceptible of, and subjected to, imputability in
the very moment of that action, just as much as though, endowed with a
predisposition to good (which is inseparable from freedom), he had stepped
out of a state of innocence into evil. Hence we cannot inquire into the
temporal origin of this deed, but solely into its rational origin, if we are
thereby to determine and, wherever possible, to elucidate the propensity, if
it exists, i.e., the general subjective ground of the adoption of transgression
into our maxim.
The foregoing agrees well with that manner of presentation which
the Scriptures use, whereby the origin of evil in the human
[37]
race is depicted as having a [temporal] beginning, this beginning being
presented in a narrative, wherein what in its essence must be considered as
primary (without regard to the element of time) appears as coming first in
time. According to this account, evil does not start from a propensity thereto
as its underlying basis, for otherwise the beginning of evil would not have
its source in freedom; rather does it start from sin (by which is meant the
transgressing of the moral law as a divine command). The state of man prior
to all propensity to evil is called the state of innocence. The moral law
became known to mankind, as it must to any being not pure but tempted by
desires, in the form of a prohibition (Genesis II, 16-17). Now instead of
straightway following this law as an adequate incentive (the only incentive
which is unconditionally good and regarding which there is no further
doubt), man looked about for other incentives (Genesis III, 6) such as can
be good only conditionally (namely, so far as they involve no infringement
of the law). He then made it his maxim--if one thinks of his action as
consciously springing from freedom--to follow the law of duty, not as duty,
but, if need be, with regard to other aims. Thereupon he began to call in
question the severity of the commandment which excludes the influence of
all other incentives; then by sophistry he reduced* obedience to the law to
the merely conditional character of a means (subject to the principle of self-
love); and finally he adopted into his maxim of conduct the ascendancy of
the sensuous impulse over the incentive which springs from the law--and
thus occurred sin (Genesis III, 6). Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur.1
From all this it is clear that we daily act in the same way, and that therefore
"in Adam all have sinned"2 and still sin; except that in us there is
presupposed an innate propensity to transgression, whereas in the first man,
from the point
[38]
of view of time, there is presupposed no such propensity but rather
innocence; hence transgression on his part is called a fall into sin; but with
us sin is represented as resulting from an already innate wickedness in our
nature. This propensity, however, signifies no more than this, that if we
wish to address ourselves to the explanation of evil in terms of its beginning
in time, we must search for the causes of each deliberate transgression in a
previous period of our lives, far back to that period wherein the use of
reason had not yet developed, and thus back to a propensity to evil (as a
natural ground) which is therefore called innate--the source of evil. But to
trace the causes of evil in the instance of the first man, who is depicted as
already in full command of the use of his reason, is neither necessary nor
feasible, since otherwise this basis (the evil propensity) would have had to
be created in him; therefore his sin is set forth as engendered directly from
innocence. We must not, however, look for an origin in time of a moral
character1 for which we are to be held responsible; though to do so is
inevitable if we wish to explain the contingent existence of this character
(and perhaps it is for this reason that Scripture, in conformity with this
weakness of ours, has thus pictured the temporal origin of evil).
But the rational origin of this perversion of our willw whereby it
makes lower incentives supreme among its maxims, that is, of the
propensity to evil, remains inscrutable to us, because this propensity itself
must be set down to our account and because, as a result, that ultimate
ground of all maxims would in turn involve the adoption of an evil maxim
[as its basis]. Evil could have sprung only from the morally-evil (not from
mere limitations in our nature); and yet the original predisposition (which no
one other than man himself could have corrupted, if he is to be held
responsible for this corruption) is a predisposition to good; there is then for
us no conceivable ground from which the moral evil in us could originally
have come. This inconceivability, together with a more accurate
specification2 of the wickedness of our race, the Bible
[39]
expresses in the historical narrative as follows.* It finds a place for evil at
the creation of the world, yet not in man, but in a spirit of an originally
loftier destiny.1 Thus is the first beginning of all evil represented as
inconceivable by us (for whence came evil to that spirit?); but man is
represented as having fallen into evil only through seduction, and hence as
being not basically corrupt (even as regards his original predisposition to
good) but rather as still capable of an improvement, in contrast to a seducing
spirit, that is, a being for whom temptation of the flesh cannot be accounted
as an alleviation of guilt. For man, therefore, who despite a corrupted heart
yet possesses a good will,2 there remains hope of a return to the good from
which he has strayed.
[40]
GENERAL OBSERVATION1
Concerning the Restoration to its Power of the Original
Predisposition to Good
Man himself must make or have made himself into whatever, in a
moral sense, whether good or evil, he is or is to become. Either condition
must be an effect of his free choicew; for otherwise he could not be held
responsible for it and could therefore be morally neither good nor evil.
When it is said, Man is created good, this can mean nothing more than: He
is created for good and the original predisposition in man is good; not that,
thereby, he is already actually good, but rather that he brings it about that he
becomes good or evil, according to whether he adopts or does not adopt
into his maxim the incentives which this predisposition carries with it ([an
act] which must be left wholly to his own free choice). Granted that some
supernatural cooperation may be necessary to his becoming good, or to his
becoming better, yet, whether this cooperation consists merely in the
abatement of hindrances or indeed in positive assistance, man must first
make himself worthy to receive it, and must lay hold of this aid (which is no
small matter)--that is, he must adopt this positive increase of power into his
maxim, for only thus can good be imputed to him and he be known as a
good man.
How it is possible for a naturally evil man to make himself a good
man wholly surpasses our comprehension; for how can a bad tree bring
forth good fruit? But since, by our previous acknowledgment, an originally
good tree (good in predisposition) did bring forth evil fruit,* and since the
lapse from good into evil (when one remembers that this originates in
freedom) is no more comprehensible than the re-ascent from evil to good,
the possibility of this last cannot be impugned. For despite the fall, the
injunction that we ought to become better men resounds unabatedly in our
souls; hence this must be within our power, even though what we are able
to do is in itself inadequate and though we thereby only
[41]
render ourselves susceptible of higher, and for us inscrutable, assistance. It
must indeed be presupposed throughout that a seed of goodness still
remains in its entire purity, incapable of being extirpated or corrupted; and
this seed certainly cannot be self-love* which, when taken as the principle
of all our maxims, is the very source of evil.
[42]
The restoration of the original predisposition to good in us is
therefore not the acquiring of a lost incentive for good, for the incentive
which consists in respect for the moral law we have never been able to lose,
and were such a thing possible, we could never get it again. Hence the
restoration is but the establishment of the purity of this law as the supreme
ground of all our maxims, whereby it is not merely associated with other
incentives, and certainly is not subordinated to any such (to inclinations) as
its conditions, but instead must be adopted, in its entire purity, as an
incentive adequate in itself for the determination of the willw. Original
goodness is the holiness of maxims in doing one's duty, merely for duty's
sake. The man who adopts this purity into his maxim is indeed not yet holy
by reason of this act (for there is a great gap between the maxim and the
deed). Still he is upon the road of endless progress towards holiness. When
the firm resolve to do one's duty has become habitual, it is also called the
virtue of conformity to law; such conformity is virtue's empirical character
(virtus phÏnomenon). Virtue here has as its steadfast maxim conduct
conforming to law; and it matters not whence come the incentives required
by the willw for such conduct. Virtue in this sense is won little by little and,
for some men, requires long practice (in observance of the law) during
which the individual passes from a tendency to vice, through gradual
reformation of his conduct and strengthening of his maxims, to an opposite
tendency. For this to come to pass a change of heart is not necessary, but
only a change of practices.1 A man accounts himself virtuous if he feels that
he is confirmed in maxims of obedience to his duty, though these do not
spring from the highest ground of all maxims, namely, from duty itself. The
immoderate person, for instance, turns to temperance for the sake of health,
the liar to honesty for the sake of reputation, the unjust man to civic
righteousness for the sake of peace or profit, and so on--all in conformity
with the precious principle of happiness. But if a man is to become not
merely legally, but morally, a good man (pleasing to God), that is, a man
endowed with
[43]
virtue in its intelligible character (virtus noumenon) and one who, knowing
something to be his duty, requires no incentive other than this representation
of duty itself, this cannot be brought about through gradual reformation so
long as the basis of the maxims remains impure, but must be effected
through a revolution in the man's disposition (a going over to the maxim of
holiness of the disposition). He can become a new man only by a kind of
rebirth, as it were a new creation (John III, 5; compare also Genesis I, 2),
and a change of heart.
But if a man is corrupt in the very ground of his maxims, how can
he possibly bring about this revolution by his own powers and of himself
become a good man? Yet duty bids us do this, and duty demands nothing of
us which we cannot do. There is no reconciliation possible here except by
saying that man is under the necessity of, and is therefore capable of, a
revolution in his cast of mind, but only of a gradual reform in his sensuous
nature1 (which places obstacles in the way of the former). That is, if a man
reverses, by a single unchangeable decision, that highest ground of his
maxims whereby he was an evil man (and thus puts on the new man), he is,
so far as his principle and cast of mind are concerned, a subject susceptible
of goodness, but only in continuous labor and growth is he a good man.
That is, he can hope in the light of that purity of the principle which he has
adopted as the supreme maxim of his willw, and of its stability, to find
himself upon the good (though strait) path of continual progress from bad to
better. For Him who penetrates to the intelligible ground of the heart (the
ground of all maxims of the willw) and for whom this unending progress is
a unity, i.e., for God, this amounts to his being actually a good man
(pleasing to Him); and, thus viewed, this change can be regarded as a
revolution. But in the judgment of men, who can appraise themselves and
the strength of their maxims only by the ascendancy which they win over
their sensuous nature2 in time, this change must be regarded as nothing but
an ever-during struggle toward the better, hence as a gradual reformation of
the propensity to evil, the perverted cast of mind.
From this it follows that man's moral growth of necessity begins not
in the improvement of his practices but rather in the transforming of his cast
of mind and in the grounding of a character; though customarily man goes
about the matter otherwise
[44]
and fights against vices one by one, leaving undisturbed their common root.
And yet even the man of greatest limitations is capable of being impressed
by respect for an action conforming to duty--a respect which is the greater
the more he isolates it, in thought, from other incentives which, through
self-love, might influence the maxim of conduct. Even children are capable
of detecting the smallest trace of admixture of improper incentives; for an
action thus motivated at once loses, in their eyes, all moral worth. This
predisposition to goodness is cultivated in no better way than by adducing
the actual example of good men (of that which concerns their conformity to
law) and by allowing young students of morals to judge the impurity of
various maxims on the basis of the actual incentives motivating the conduct
of these good men. The predisposition is thus gradually transformed into a
cast of mind, and duty, for its own sake, begins to have a noticeable
importance in their hearts. But to teach a pupil to admire virtuous actions,
however great the sacrifice these may have entailed, is not in harmony with1
preserving his feeling for moral goodness. For be a man never so virtuous,
all the goodness he can ever perform is still his simple duty; and to do his
duty is nothing more than to do what is in the common moral order and
hence in no way deserving of wonder. Such wonder is rather a lowering of
our feeling for duty, as if to act in obedience to it were something
extraordinary and meritorious.
Yet there is one thing in our soul which we cannot cease from
regarding with the highest wonder, when we view it properly, and for
which admiration is not only legitimate but even exalting, and that is the
original moral predisposition itself2 in us. What is it in us (we can ask
ourselves) whereby we, beings ever dependent upon nature through so
many needs, are at the same time raised so far above these needs by the idea
of an original predisposition (in us) that we count them all as nothing, and
ourselves as unworthy of existence, if we cater to their satisfaction (though
this alone can make life worth desiring) in opposition to the law--a law by
virtue of which our reason commands us potently, yet without making
either promises or threats? The force of this question every man, even one
of the meanest capacity, must feel most deeply--every man, that is, who
previously has been taught the holiness which inheres in the idea of duty but
who has not yet advanced to an
[45]
inquiry into the concept of freedom, which first and foremost emerges from
this law:* and the very incomprehensibility of this predisposition, which
announces a divine origin, acts perforce upon the spirit even to the point of
exaltation, and strengthens it for whatever sacrifice a man's respect for his
duty may demand of him. More frequently to excite in man this feeling of
the sublimity of his moral destiny is especially commendable as a method of
awakening moral sentiments. For to do so works directly against the innate
propensity to invert the incentives in the maxims of our willw and toward
the re-establishment in the human heart, in the form of an unconditioned
respect for the law as the ultimate condition upon which maxims are to be
adopted, of the original
[46]
moral order among the incentives, and so of the predisposition to good in all
its purity.
But does not this restoration through one's own exertions directly
contradict the postulate1 of the innate corruption of man which unfits him
for all good? Yes, to be sure, as far as the conceivability, i.e., our insight
into the possibility, of such a restoration is concerned. This is true of
everything which is to be regarded as an event in time (as change), and to
that extent as necessary under the laws of nature, while at the same time its
opposite is to be represented as possible through freedom under moral laws.
Yet the postulate in question is not opposed to the possibility of this
restoration itself. For when the moral law commands that we ought now to
be better men, it follows inevitably that we must be able to be better men.
The postulate of innate evil is of no use whatever in moral dogmatics,2 for
the precepts of the latter carry with them the same duties and continue in
identical force whether or not there is in us an innate tendency toward
transgression. But in moral discipline3 this postulate has more to say,
though no more than this: that in the moral development of the
predisposition to good implanted in us, we cannot start from an innocence
natural to us but must begin with the assumption of a wickedness of the
willw in adopting its maxims contrary to the original moral predisposition;
and, since this propensity [to evil] is inextirpable, we must begin with the
incessant counteraction against it. Since this leads only to a progress,
endlessly continuing, from bad to better, it follows that the conversion of
the disposition of a bad man into that of a good one is to be found in the
change of the highest inward ground of the adoption of all his maxims,
conformable to the moral law, so far as this new ground (the new heart) is
now itself unchangeable. Man cannot attain naturally to assurance
concerning such a revolution, however, either by immediate consciousness
or through the evidence furnished by the life which he has hitherto led; for
the deeps of the heart (the subjective first ground of his maxims) are
inscrutable to him. Yet he must be able to hope through his own efforts to
reach the road which leads thither, and which is pointed out to him by a
fundamentally improved disposition, because he ought to become a good
man and is to be adjudged morally good only by virtue of that which can be
imputed to him as performed by himself.
[47]
Against this expectation of self-improvement, reason, which is by
nature averse to the labor of moral reconstruction, now summons, under the
pretext of natural incapacity, all sorts of ignoble religious ideas (among
which belongs the false ascription to God Himself of the principle of
happiness as the chief condition of His commandments). All religions,
however, can be divided into those which are endeavors to win favor (mere
worship) and moral religions, i.e., religions of good life-conduct. In the
first, man flatters himself by believing either that God can make him
eternally happy (through remission of his sins) without his having to
become a better man, or else, if this seems to him impossible, that God can
certainly make him a better man without his having to do anything more
than to ask for it. Yet since, in the eyes of a Being who sees all, to ask is no
more than to wish, this would really involve doing nothing at all; for were
improvement to be achieved simply by a wish, every man would be good.
But in the moral religion (and of all the public religions which have ever
existed, the Christian alone is moral) it is a basic principle that each must do
as much as lies in his power to become a better man, and that only when he
has not buried his inborn talent (Luke XIX, 12-16) but has made use of his
original predisposition to good in order to become a better man, can he hope
that what is not within his power will be supplied through cooperation from
above. Nor is it absolutely necessary for a man to know wherein this
cooperation consists; indeed, it is perhaps inevitable that, were the way it
occurs revealed at a given time, different people would at some other time
form different conceptions of it, and that with entire sincerity. Even here the
principle is valid: "It is not essential, and hence not necessary, for every one
to know what God does or has done for his salvation;" but it is essential to
know what man himself must do in order to become worthy of this
assistance.
This1 General Observation is the first of four which are appended,
one to each Book of this work, and which might bear the titles, (l) Works of
Grace, (2) Miracles, (3) Mysteries, and (4) Means of Grace. These matters
are, as it were, parerga to religion within the limits of pure reason; they do
not belong within it but border upon it. Reason, conscious of her inability to
satisfy her moral need, extends herself to high-flown2 ideas capable of
supplying
[48]
this lack, without, however, appropriating these ideas as an extension of her
domain. Reason does not dispute the possibility or the reality of the objects
of these ideas; she simply cannot adopt them into her maxims of thought
and action. She even holds that, if in the inscrutable realm of the
supernatural there is something more than she can explain to herself, which
may yet be necessary as a complement to her moral insufficiency, this will
be, even though unknown, available to her good will. Reason believes this
with a faith which (with respect to the possibility of this supernatural
complement) might be called reflective; for dogmatic faith, which proclaims
itself as a form of knowledge, appears to her dishonest or presumptuous.
To remove the difficulties, then, in the way of that which (for moral
practice) stands firm in and for itself, is merely a by-work (parergon), when
these difficulties have reference to transcendent questions. As regards the
damage resulting from these morally-transcendent ideas, when we seek to
introduce them into religion, the consequences, listed in the order of the
four classes named above, are: (1) [corresponding] to imagined inward
experience (works of grace), [the consequence is] fanaticism; (2) to alleged
external experience (miracles), superstition; (3) to a supposed enlightening
of the understanding with regard to the supernatural (mysteries),
illumination, the illusion of the "adepts"; (4) to hazardous attempts to
operate upon the supernatural (means of grace), thaumaturgy--sheer
aberrations of a reason going beyond its proper limits and that too for a
purpose fancied to be moral (pleasing to God).
But touching that which especially concerns this General
Observation to Book One of the present treatise, the calling to our assistance
of works of grace is one of these aberrations and cannot be adopted into the
maxims of reason, if she is to remain within her limits; as indeed can
nothing of the supernatural, simply because in this realm all use of reason
ceases. For it is impossible to find a way to define these things theoretically
([showing] that they are works of grace and not inner natural effects)
because our use of the concept of cause and effect cannot be extended
beyond matters of experience, and hence beyond nature. Moreover, even
the hypothesis of a practical application of this idea is wholly self-
contradictory. For the employment of this idea would presuppose a rule
concerning the good which (for a particular end) we ourselves must do in
order to accomplish something, whereas to await
[49]
a work of grace means exactly the opposite, namely, that the good (the
morally good) is not our deed but the deed of another being, and that we
therefore can achieve it only by doing nothing, which contradicts itself.
Hence we can admit a work of grace as something incomprehensible, but
we cannot adopt it into our maxims either for theoretical or for practical use.
NOTES:
1 [15] [Cf. I John V, 19]
* [15] Aetas parentum peior avis tulit
Nos nequiores, mox daturos
Progeniem vitiosiorem.
Horace [Odes, III, 6.
...Our father's race
More deeply versed in ill
Than were their sires, hath borne us yet
More wicked, duly to beget
A race more vicious still.
(Martin)]
1 [16] De ira, II, 13, 1: "We are sick with curable diseases, and if
we wish to be cured, nature comes to our aid, for we were born to health."]
2 [16] [nicht allemal]
1 [17] [Aktus]
* [17] That the ultimate subjective ground of the adoption of moral
maxims is inscrutable is indeed already evident from this, that since this
adoption is free, its ground (why, for example, I have chosen an evil and
not a good maxim) must not be sought in any natural impulse, but always
again in a
[18]
maxim. Now since this maxim also must have its ground, and since apart
from maxims no determining ground of free choicew can or ought to be
adduced, we are referred back endlessly in the series of subjective
determining grounds, without ever being able to reach the ultimate ground.
* [18] If the good = a, then its diametric opposite is the not-good.
This latter is the result either of a mere absence of a basis of goodness, = 0,
or of a positive ground of the opposite of good, = -a. In the second case the
not-good may also be called positive evil. (As regards pleasure and pain
there is a similar middle term, whereby pleasure = a, pain = -a, and the state
in which neither is to be found, indifference, = 0.) Now if the moral law in
us were not a motivating force of the willw, the morally good (the
agreement of the willw with the law) would = a, and the not-good would =
0; the latter, as merely the result of the absence of a moral motivating force,
would = a ´ 0. In us, however, the law is a motivating force, = a; hence the
absence of agreement of the willw with this law (= 0) is possible only as a
consequence of a real and contrary determination of the willw, i.e., of an
opposition to the law, = -a, i.e., of an evil willw. Between a good and an
evil disposition (inner principle of maxims), according to which the morality
of an action must be judged, there is therefore no middle ground.
A1 morally indifferent action (adiaphoron morale) would be one
resulting merely from natural laws, and hence standing in no relation
whatsoever to the moral law, which is the law of freedom; for such action is
not a morally significant fact at all and regarding it neither command, nor
prohibition, nor permission (legal privilege) occurs or is necessary.
1 [18] [Added in the Second Edition.]
** [18] Professor Schiller, in his masterly treatise (Thalia, 1793,
Part III) on grace and dignity in morality, objects to this way of representing
obligation,
[19]
as carrying with it a monastic cast of mind. Since, however, we are at one
upon the most important principles, I cannot admit that there is disagreement
here, if only we can make ourselves clear to one another. I freely grant that
by very reason of the dignity of the idea of duty I am unable to associate
grace with it. For the idea of duty involves absolute necessity, to which
grace stands in direct contradiction. The majesty of the moral law (as of the
law on Sinai) instils awe (not dread, which repels, nor yet charm, which
invites familiarity); and in this instance, since the ruler resides within us,
this respect, as of a subject toward his ruler, awakens a sense of the
sublimity of our own destiny which enraptures us more than any beauty.
Virtue, also, i.e., the firmly grounded disposition strictly to fulfil our duty,
is also beneficent in its results, beyond all that nature and art can accomplish
in the world; and the august picture of humanity, as portrayed in this
character, does indeed allow the attendance of the graces. But when duty
alone is the theme, they keep a respectful distance. If we consider, further,
the happy results which virtue, should she gain admittance everywhere,
would spread throughout the world, [we see] morally-directed reason (by
means of the imagination) calling the sensibilities1 into play. Only after
vanquishing monsters did Hercules become Musagetes, leader of the
Muses,--after labors from which those worthy sisters, trembling, draw
back. The attendants of Venus Urania become wantons in the train of Venus
Dione as soon as they meddle in the business of determining duty and try to
provide springs of action therefor.
Now if one asks, What is the aesthetic character,2 the temperament,
so to speak, of virtue, whether courageous and hence joyous or fear-ridden
and dejected, an answer is hardly necessary. This latter slavish frame of
mind can never occur without a hidden hatred of the law. And a heart which
is happy in the performance of its duty (not merely complacent in the
recognition thereof) is a mark of genuineness in the virtuous disposition--of
genuineness even in piety, which does not consist in the self-inflicted
torment of a repentant sinner (a very ambiguous state of mind, which
ordinarily is nothing but inward regret at having infringed upon the rules of
prudence), but rather in the firm resolve to do better in the future. This
resolve, then, encouraged by good progress, must needs beget a joyous
frame of mind, without which man is never certain of having really attained
a love for the good, i.e., of having incorporated it into his maxim.
1 [19] [Sinnlichkeit]
2 [19] [Beschaffenheit]
* [20] The ancient moral philosophers, who pretty well exhausted all
that can be said upon virtue, have not left untouched the two questions
mentioned above. The first they expressed thus: Must virtue be learned? (Is
man by nature indifferent as regards virtue and vice?) The second they put
thus: Is there more than one virtue (so that man might be virtuous in some
respects, in others vicious)? Both questions were answered by them, with
rigoristic precision, in the negative, and rightly so; for they were
considering virtue as such, as it is in the idea of reason (that which man
ought to be). If, however, we wish to pass moral judgment on this moral
being, man as he appears, i.e., as experience reveals him to us, we can
answer both questions in the affirmative; for in this case we judge him not
according to the standard of pure reason (at a divine tribunal) but by an
empirical standard (before a human judge). This subject will be treated
further in what follows.
1 [20] [Kant closes this parenthesis at the end of the sentence; our
alteration seems necessitated by the meaning.]
1 [21] [Our phrase "fixed character and destiny" translates
Bestimmung.]
* [21] We cannot regard this as included in the concept of the
preceding, but necessarily must treat it as a special predisposition. For from
the fact that a being has reason it by no means follows that this reason, by
the mere representing of the fitness of its maxims to be laid down as
universal laws, is thereby rendered capable of determining the willw
unconditionally, so as to be "practical" of itself; at least, not so far as we can
see. The most rational mortal being in the world might still stand in need of
certain incentives, originating in objects of desire, to determine his choicew.
He might. indeed, bestow the most rational reflection on all that concerns
not only the greatest sum of these incentives in him but also the means of
attaining the end thereby determined, without ever suspecting the possibility
of such a thing as the absolutely imperative moral law which proclaims that
it is itself an incentive, and, indeed, the highest. Were it not given us from
within, we should never by any ratiocination subtilize it into existence or
win over our willw to it; yet this law is the only law which informs us of the
independence of our willw from determination by all other incentives (of
our freedom) and at the same time of the accountability of all our actions.
1 [22] [Rohigkeit]
2 [22] [The two English words translate Všllerei.]
3 [22] [Reading Anlage for Anlagen.]
4 [22] [Kultur. Cf. below, p. 29, where these vices are referred to
as vices of culture and civilization (Kultur und Zivilisierung).]
1 [24] [Concupiscentia added in the Second Edition.]
[24] A propensity (Hang) is really only the predisposition2 to
crave a delight which, when once experienced, arouses in the subject an
inclination to it. Thus all savage peoples have a propensity for intoxicants;
for though many of them are wholly ignorant of intoxication and in
consequence have absolutely no craving for an intoxicant, let them but once
sample it and there is aroused in them an almost inextinguishable craving for
it.
Between inclination, which presupposes acquaintance with the
object of desire, and propensity there still is instinct, which is a felt want to
do or to enjoy something of which one has as yet no conception (such as the
constructive impulse in animals, or the sexual impulse) . Beyond inclination
there is finally a further stage in the faculty of desire, passion (not emotion,
for this has to do with the feeling of pleasure and pain), which is an
inclination that excludes the mastery over oneself.
2 [24] [Predisposition; not the usual German word Anlage, which
heretofore we have translated as predisposition.]
3 [24] [Unlauterkeit, i.e., lack of single-mindedness, integrity.]
1 [25] [Cf. Romans, VIl, 15]
2 [25] [in der Idee]
1 [26] [Cf. Romans XIV, 23]
2 [26] [sinnliche, i.e., pertaining to sense]
1 [27] [intelligible and sensible]
2 [27] [Sinnlichkeit]
3 [27] [Satires, I, iii, 68: "No one is born free from vices."]
1 [28] [verderbter; misprinted verdorbener in the First Edition.]
2 [28] [Samuel Hearne (1745-1792), an English traveller, in the
service of the Hudson Bay Company. His Account of a Journey from
Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northwest was published in
1795. Kant evidently had read the brief account of Hearne's travels in
Douglas's Introduction to Cook's Third Voyage, London, 1784.]
* [28] Thus the war ceaselessly waged between the Arathapescaw
Indians and the Dog Rib Indians has no other object than mere slaughter.
Bravery in war is, in the opinion of savages, the highest virtue. Even in a
civilized state it is an object of admiration and a basis for the special regard
commanded by that profession in which bravery is the sole merit; and this is
not without rational cause. For that man should be able to possess a thing
(i.e., honor) and make it an end to be valued more than life itself, and
because of it renounce all self-interest, surely bespeaks a certain nobility in
his natural disposition. Yet we recognize in the complacency with which
victors boast their mighty deeds (massacres, butchery without quarter, and
the like) that it is merely their own superiority and the destruction they can
wreak, without any other objective, in which they really take satisfaction.
3 [28] [Rohigkeit]
1 [29] [La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, No. 583: "Dans l'adversitŽ de
nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons toujours quelque chose qui ne nous
deplait pas."]
2 [29] [den aŸszern Všlkerzustand]
[29] When we survey the history of these, merely as the
phenomenon of the inner predispositions of mankind which are for the most
part concealed from us, we become aware of a certain machine-like
movement of nature toward ends which are nature's own rather than those
of the nations. Each separate state, so long as it has a neighboring state
which it dares hope to conquer, strives to aggrandize itself through such a
conquest, and thus to attain a world-monarchy, a polity wherein all
freedom, and with it (as a consequence) virtue, taste, and learning, would
necessarily expire. Yet this monster (in which laws gradually lose their
force), after it has swallowed all its neighbors, finally dissolves of itself,
and through rebellion and disunion breaks up into many smaller states.
These, instead of striving toward a league of nations (a republic of federated
free nations), begin the same game over again, each for itself, so that war
(that scourge of humankind) may not be allowed to cease. Although indeed
war is not so incurably evil as that tomb, a universal autocracy (or even as a
confederacy which exists to hasten the weakening of a despotism in any
single state), yet, as one of the ancients put it, war creates more evil men
than it destroys.3
3 ["This is also cited by Kant in the first Appendix to Section II of
Zum ewigen Frieden. There the quotation is termed 'a saying of that Greek';
unfortunately, its source has not been found." (Note in Berlin Edition.)]
1 [30] [Sinnlichkeit]
2 [30] [Wille]
1 [31] [Our phrase "determining of the will" translates
Willensbestimmung.]
1 [32] [i.e., to the inversion of the ethical order of the incentives.]
2 [32] [Bosheit]
3 [32] [Bšse]
4 [32] [im Allegemeinen]
1 [33] [TŸcke]
1 [34] [Sir Robert Walpole. What he said, however, was not so
universal: "All those men" (referring to certain "patriots") "have their
price."]
2 [34] [allgemein]
3 [34] [Cf. Romans III, 9-10]
* [34] The special proof of this sentence of condemnation by
morally judging reason is to be found in the preceding section rather than in
this one, which contains only the confirmation of it by experience.
Experience, however, never can reveal the root of evil in the supreme
maxim of the free willw relating to the law, a maxim which, as intelligible
act, precedes all experience. Hence from the singleness of the supreme
maxim, together with the singleness of the law to which it relates itself, we
can also understand why, for the pure intellectual judgment of mankind, the
rule of excluding a mean between good and evil must remain fundamental;
yet for the empirical judgment based on sensible conduct4 (actual
performance and neglect) the rule may be laid down that there is a mean
between these extremes--on the one hand a negative mean of indifference
prior to all education, on the other hand a positive, a mixture, partly good
and partly evil. However, this latter is merely a judgment upon the morality
of mankind as appearance, and must give place to the former in a final
judgment.
4 [34] [sinnlicher That]
1 [35] [Beschaffenheit]
2 [35] [Ovid, Metamorphoses, Xlll, 140-141: "Race and ancestors,
and those things which we ourselves have not made, I scarcely account our
own."]
* [35] The three so-called "higher faculties" (in the universities)
would explain this transmission of evil each in terms of its own specialty, as
inherited disease, inherited debt, or inherited sin. (1) The faculty of
medicine would represent this hereditary evil somewhat as it represents the
tapeworm, concerning which several naturalists actually believe that, since
no specimens have been met with anywhere but in us, not even (of this
particular type) in other animals, it must have existed in our first parents. (2)
The faculty of law would regard this evil as the legitimate consequence of
succeeding to the patrimony bequeathed us by our first parents, [an
inheritance] encumbered, however, with heavy forfeitures (for to be born is
no other than to inherit the use of
[36]
earthly goods so far as they are necessary to our continued existence). Thus
we must fulfil payment (atone) and at the end still be dispossessed (by
death) of the property. How just is legal justice! (3) The theological faculty
would regard this evil as the personal participation by our first parents in the
fall of a condemned rebel, maintaining either that we ourselves then
participated (although now unconscious of having done so), or that even
now, born under the rule of the rebel (as prince of this world), we prefer his
favors to the supreme command of the heavenly Ruler, and do not possess
enough faith to free ourselves; wherefore we must also eventually share his
doom.
* [37] All homage paid to the moral law is an act of hypocrisy, if, in
one's maxim, ascendancy is not at the same time granted to the law as an
incentive sufficient in itself and higher than all other determining grounds of
the willw. The propensity to do this is inward deceit, i.e., a tendency to
deceive oneself in the interpretation of the moral law, to its detriment
(Genesis III, 5). Accordingly, the Bible (the Christian portion of it)
denominates the author of evil (who is within us) as the liar from the
beginning, and thus characterizes man with respect to what seems to be the
chief ground of evil in him.
1 [37] [Horace, Satires, I, 1. "Change but the name, of you the tale
is told." (Conington)]
2 [37] [Cf. Romans V, 12. "The efÕ w panteV hmarton of the Greek
text (= epi toutw oti k. t. l. = 'on this ground, that . .') is rendered in the
Latin translation (the Vulgate) by in quo omnes peccaverunt; and this in quo
was in early times taken as a
[38]
masculine, to mean 'in Adam' (particularly by Augustine, in the interest of
his doctrine of inherited sin: in Adam omnes tunc peccaverunt, quando in
eius natura illa insita vi, qua eos gignere poterat, adhuc omnes ille unus
fuerunt. De pecc. mer. et rem., III, 7, 14). This interpretation continued to
be dominant in the older Protestant exegesis. Indeed, even today critical
interpreters defend the notion that 'in Adam' may be supplied as really in the
thought of Paul." (Note in Berlin Edition.)]
1 [38] [Beschaffenheit]
2 [38] [Bestimmung]
* [39] What is written here must not be read as though intended for
Scriptural exegesis, which lies beyond the limits of the domain of bare
reason. It is possible to explain how an historical account is to be put to a
moral use without deciding whether this is the intention of the author or
merely our interpretation, provided this meaning is true in itself, apart from
all historical proof, and is moreover the only one whereby we can derive
something conducive to our betterment from a passage which otherwise
would be only an unfruitful addition to our historical knowledge. We must
not quarrel unnecessarily over a question or over its historical aspect, when,
however it is understood, it in no way helps us to be better men, and when
that which can afford such help is discovered without historical proof, and
indeed must be apprehended without it. That historical knowledge which
has no inner bearing valid for all men belongs to the class of adiaphora,
which each man is free to hold as he finds edifying.
1 [39] [Bestimmung]
2 [39] [Wille]
1 [40] [In the First Edition this "General Observation" was
designated as section V.]
* [40] The tree, good in predisposition, is not yet good in actuality,
for were it so, it could certainly not bring forth bad fruit. Only when a man
has adopted into his maxim the incentive implanted in him of allegiance to
the moral law is he to be called a good man (or the tree a thoroughly good
tree).
* [41] Words which can be taken in two entirely different meanings
frequently delay for a long time the reaching of a conviction even on the
clearest of grounds. Like love in general, so also can self-love be divided
into love of good will and love of good pleasure (benevolentiae et
complacentiae), and both (as is self-evident) must be rational. To adopt the
former into one's maxim is natural (for who will not wish to have it always
go well with him?); it is also rational so far as, on the one hand, that end is
chosen which can accord with the greatest and most abiding welfare, and,
on the other, the fittest means are chosen [to secure] each of the components
of happiness. Here reason holds but the place of a handmaid to natural
inclination; the maxim adopted on such grounds has absolutely no reference
to morality. Let this maxim, however, be made the unconditional principle
of the willw, and it is the source of an incalculably great antagonism to
morality.
A rational love of good pleasure in oneself can be understood in
either of two ways: first, that we are well pleased with ourselves with
respect to those maxims already mentioned which aim at the gratification of
natural inclination (so far as that end is attained through following those
maxims); and then it is identical with love as good will toward oneself: one
takes pleasure in oneself, just as a merchant whose business speculations
turn out well rejoices in his good discernment regarding the maxims he used
in these transactions. In the second sense, the maxim of self-love as
unqualified good pleasure in oneself (not dependent upon success or failure
as consequences of conduct) would be the inner principle of such a
contentment as is possible to us only on condition that our maxims are
subordinated to the moral law. No man who is not indifferent to morality
can take pleasure in himself, can indeed escape a bitter dissatisfaction with
himself, when he is conscious of maxims which do not agree with the moral
law in him. One might call that a rational self-love which prevents any
adulteration of the incentives of the willw by other causes of happiness such
as come from the consequences of one's actions (under the name of a
thereby attainable happiness). Since, however this denotes an unconditional
respect for the law, why needlessly render difficult the clear understanding
of the principle by using the term rational self-love, when the use of the
term moral self-love is restricted to this very condition, thus going around in
a circle? (For only he can love himself in a moral fashion who knows that it
is his maxim to make reverence for the law the highest incentive of his
willw.) By our nature as beings dependent upon circumstances of
sensibility, we crave happiness first and unconditionally. Yet by this same
nature of ours (if we wish in general so to term that which is innate). as
beings endowed with reason and freedom, this happiness is far from being
first, nor indeed is it unconditionally an object of our maxims; rather this
object is
[42]
worthiness to be happy, i.e., the agreement of all our maxims with the
moral law. That this is objectively the condition whereby alone the wish for
happiness can square with legislative reason--therein consists the whole
precept of morality; and the moral cast of mind consists in the disposition to
harbor no wish except on these terms.
1 [42] [Sitten]
1 [43] [Sinnesart]
2 [43] [Sinnlichkeit]
1 [44] [die rechte Stimmung]
2 [44] [Ÿberhaupt]
* [45] The concept of the freedom of the willw does not precede the
consciousness of the moral law in us but is deduced from the
determinability of our willw by this law as an unconditional command. Of
this we can soon be convinced by asking ourselves whether we are certainly
and immediately conscious of power to overcome, by a firm resolve, every
incentive, however great, to transgression (Phalaris licet imperet, ut sis
falsus et admoto dictet periuria tauro).1 Everyone will have to admit that he
does not know whether, were such a situation to arise, he would not be
shaken in his resolution. Still, duty commands him unconditionally: he
ought to remain true to his resolve; and thence he rightly concludes that he
must be able to do so, and that his willw is therefore free. Those who
fallaciously represent this inscrutable property as quite comprehensible
create an illusion by means of the word determinism (the thesis that the
willw is determined by inner self-sufficient grounds) as though the
difficulty consisted in reconciling this with freedom--which after all never
occurs to one; whereas what we wish to understand, and never shall
understand, is how predeterminism, according to which voluntary2 actions,
as events, have their determining grounds in antecedent time (which, with
what happened in it. is no longer within our power), can he consistent with
freedom, according to which the act as well as its opposite must be within
the power of the subject at the moment of its taking place.
To3 reconcile the concept of freedom with the idea of God as a
necessary Being raises no difficulty at all: for freedom consists not in the
contingency of the act (that it is determined by no grounds whatever), i.e.,
not in indeterminism (that God must be equally capable of doing good or
evil, if His actions are to be called free), but rather in absolute spontaneity.
Such spontaneity is endangered only by predeterminism, where the
determining ground of the act is in antecedent time, with the result that, the
act being now no longer in my power but in the hands of nature, I am
irresistibly determined; but since in God no temporal sequence is thinkable,
this difficulty vanishes.
1 [45] [Juvenal, Satires Vlll, 81-82: "though Phalaris himself should
command you to be false and should bring up his bull and dictate
perjuries."]
2 [45] [willkŸrliche]
3 [45] [This paragraph added in the Second Edition.]
1 [46] [Satz]
2 [46] [Dogmatik]
3 [46] [Ascetik]
1 [47] [From here to the end of Book One added in the Second
Edition.]
2 [47] [Ÿberschwenglich]