Transgression of the law, would, no doubt, be avoided; what
is commanded would be done; but the mental disposition, from which
actions ought to proceed, cannot be infused by any command, and in
this case the spur of action is ever active and external, so that
reason has no need to exert itself in order to gather strength to
resist the inclinations by a lively representation of the dignity of
the law: hence most of the actions that conformed to the law would
be done from fear, a few only from hope, and none at all from duty,
and the moral worth of actions, on which alone in the eyes of
supreme wisdom the worth of the person and even that of the world
depends, would cease to exist. As long as the nature of man remains
what it is, his conduct would thus be changed into mere mechanism,
in which, as in a puppet-show, everything would gesticulate well,
but there would be no life in the figures. Now, when it is quite
otherwise with us, when with all the effort of our reason we have only
a very obscure and doubtful view into the future, when the Governor of
the world allows us only to conjecture his existence and his
majesty, not to behold them or prove them clearly; and on the other
hand, the moral law within us, without promising or threatening
anything with certainty, demands of us disinterested respect; and only
when this respect has become active and dominant, does it allow us
by means of it a prospect into the world of the supersensible, and
then only with weak glances: all this being so, there is room for true
moral disposition, immediately devoted to the law, and a rational
creature can become worthy of sharing in the summum bonum that
corresponds to the worth of his person and not merely to his
actions.
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