If this feeling of respect were
pathological, and therefore were a feeling of pleasure based on the
inner sense, it would be in vain to try to discover a connection of it
with any idea a priori. But [it] is a feeling that applies merely to
what is practical, and depends on the conception of a law, simply as
to its form, not on account of any object, and therefore cannot be
reckoned either as pleasure or pain, and yet produces an interest in
obedience to the law, which we call the moral interest, just as the
capacity of taking such an interest in the law (or respect for the
moral law itself) is properly the moral feeling.
The consciousness of a free submission of the will to the law, yet
combined with an inevitable constraint put upon all inclinations,
though only by our own reason, is respect for the law. The law that
demands this respect and inspires it is clearly no other than the
moral (for no other precludes all inclinations from exercising any
direct influence on the will). An action which is objectively
practical according to this law, to the exclusion of every determining
principle of inclination, is duty, and this by reason of that
exclusion includes in its concept practical obligation, that is, a
determination to actions, however reluctantly they may be done.
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