is directly opposed to the principle that in judging of the moral quality of actions no regard whatever shall be paid to consequences. In reply to this criticism by Schopenhauer, it may be said that however the language of Kant in certain places may seem to justify this charge of inconsistency, it does not hold when his meaning is understood. The criterion is not the pleasure or the pain resulting to the agent which gives to an act universally performed the authority of law: it is the absurdity or the non-absurdity which would follow its universal practice. A nature whose fundamental law was self-destruction would be impossible, because self-contradictory. The same self-destructive character would appear in the case of society, if false promises were universally made. The test is not, as Schopenhauer conceives it: If everybody should do as I do, should I experience pleasure or pain? The question is this: Whether an act, made a law, would annul itself?
But this charge refuted, Kant is not yet cleared of inconsistency. In the Doctrine of Rights the consequences deduced are not in accordance with the principles. This appears in the discussion of the question of the legitimacy of appropriation in general, and of the soil in particular, in which the right to acquire and to hold is made to rest upon the power to defend:—a form of validation which, however consonant with practice, is not consistent with the Kantian principle which makes right regulate power, and not the reverse.
The second question concerns the principles themselves. Are they admissible? In defence of them, Kant has to show: (1) That an act has moral value only when done freely and with regard to the categorical form and not to the matter, i.e., the results of the act. (2) That one in acting must believe himself free and therefore capable of morality. (3) That certain religious beliefs may accompany the moral life, drawn from the consideration of the sovereign good, to which man must aspire, but yet without subordinating virtue to happiness. These beliefs, or postulates, are the immortality of the soul and the existence of God. The author's criticism begins with the third principle. Of the justness of it the reader may judge. It amounts to this. Kant's argument here rests upon the proposition: It is a moral obligation to realize the sovereign good. For Kant, obligation assures possibility. The case turns on this: Am I morally bound to realize the sovereign good? Kant has not shown this to be a duty. Moreover, he cannot do it. One is under obligation to be virtuous, but not to be happy. The sovereign good includes both. Happiness is not an object of duty, but of desire. And in Kant's theory duty excludes desire. Kant says (but very rarely), that it is a
