For all true and voluntary righteousness, for all loving-kindness, for all nobleness, wherever these qualities may be found, my theory can only point to a very small foundation; whereas my opponents confidently construct broad bases for Morals, which are made strong enough for every possible burden, and are at the same time thrust upon every doubter's conscience, accompanied with a threatening side-glance at his own morality. As contrasted with these, my own position is indeed in sore and sorry plight. It is like that of Cordelia before King Lear, with her weakly worded assurance of dutiful affection, compared with the effusive protestations of her more eloquent sisters. So that there seems to be need of a cordial that may be furnished by some maxim taken from intellectual hunting grounds, such as, Magna est vis veritatis, et praevalebit. (Great is the strength of truth, and it will prevail.) But to a man who has lived and laboured even this fails to give much encouragement. Meanwhile, I will for once make the venture with truth on my side; and what opposes me will at the same time oppose truth.
[1] That is, the Categorical Imperative appears at first as your "obedient humble servant," ready to perform any useful service, e.g., the solving of ethical riddles; while it ends by gaining the upper hand, and commanding.—(Translator.)
[CHAPTER II.]
GENERAL RETROSPECT.
For the people morality comes through, and is founded on, theology, as the express will of God. On the other hand, we see philosophers, with few exceptions, taking special pains to entirely exclude this kind of foundation; indeed, so they may but avoid it, they prefer even to find a refuge in sophistry. Whence comes this antithesis? Assuredly no more efficient basis for Ethics can be imagined than the theological; for who would be so bold as to oppose the will of the Almighty and the Omniscient? Unquestionably, no one; if only this will were proclaimed in an authentic, official manner (if one may say so), whereby no possible room for doubt could be left. This, however, is precisely the condition which does not admit of being realised. It is rather the inverse process which is attempted. The law declared to be the will of God men try to accredit as such, by demonstrating its agreement with our own independent, and hence, natural moral views, and an appeal is consequently made to these as being more direct and certain. But this is not all. We perceive that an action performed solely through threat of punishment and promise of reward would be moral much more in appearance than in reality; since, after all, it would have its root in Egoism, and in the last resort the scale would be turned by the greater or less amount of credulity evinced in each case. Now it was none other than Kant who destroyed the foundations of Speculative Theology, which up to his time were accounted unshakable. Speculative Theology had hitherto sustained Ethics, and in order to procure for the former an existence of some sort, if only an imaginary one, his wish was to proceed inversely, and make Ethics sustain Speculative Theology. So that it is now more than ever impossible to think of basing Ethics on Theology; for no one knows any longer which of the two is to be the supporter, and which the supported, and the consequence is a circulus vitiosus.
It is precisely through the influence of Kant's philosophy; through the contemporaneous effect of the unparalleled progress made in all the natural sciences, with regard to which every past age in comparison with our own appears childish; and lastly, through the knowledge of Sanskrit literature, and of those most ancient and widest spread faiths, Brahmanism and Buddhism, which, as far as time and space go, are the most important religions systems of mankind, and, as a matter of fact, are the original native religions of our own race, now well known to be of Asiatic descent—our race, to which in its new strange home they once more send a message across the centuries;—it is because of all this, I say, that the fundamental philosophical convictions of learned Europe have in the course of the last fifty years undergone a revolution, which perhaps many only reluctantly admit, but which cannot be denied. The result of this change is that the old supports of Ethics have been shown to be rotten, while the assurance remains that Ethics itself can never collapse; whence the conviction arises that for it there must exist a groundwork different from any hitherto provided, and adaptable to the advanced views of the age. The need of such is making itself felt more and more, and in it we undoubtedly find the reason that has induced the Royal Society to make the present important question the subject of a prize essay.