For the
inclinations change, they grow with the indulgence shown them, and
always leave behind a still greater void than we had thought to
fill. Hence they are always burdensome to a rational being, and,
although he cannot lay them aside, they wrest from him the wish to
be rid of them. Even an inclination to what is right (e.g., to
beneficence), though it may much facilitate the efficacy of the
moral maxims, cannot produce any. For in these all must be directed to
the conception of the law as a determining principle, if the action is
to contain morality and not merely legality. Inclination is blind
and slavish, whether it be of a good sort or not, and, when morality
is in question, reason must not play the part merely of guardian to
inclination, but disregarding it altogether must attend simply to
its own interest as pure practical reason. This very feeling of
compassion and tender sympathy, if it precedes the deliberation on the
question of duty and becomes a determining principle, is even annoying
to right thinking persons, brings their deliberate maxims into
confusion, and makes them wish to be delivered from it and to be
subject to lawgiving reason alone.
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