*
* We may say of every action that conforms to the law, but is not
done for the sake of the law, that it is morally good in the letter,
not in the spirit (the intention).
Since, then, for the purpose of giving the moral law influence
over the will, we must not seek for any other motives that might
enable us to dispense with the motive of the law itself, because
that would produce mere hypocrisy, without consistency; and it is even
dangerous to allow other motives (for instance, that of interest) even
to co-operate along with the moral law; hence nothing is left us but
to determine carefully in what way the moral law becomes a motive, and
what effect this has upon the faculty of desire. For as to the
question how a law can be directly and of itself a determining
principle of the will (which is the essence of morality), this is, for
human reason, an insoluble problem and identical with the question:
how a free will is possible. Therefore what we have to show a priori
is not why the moral law in itself supplies a motive, but what
effect it, as such, produces (or, more correctly speaking, must
produce) on the mind.
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