The passage (from Bernhardi) quoted earlier puts the German principle of duty in opposition to the French principle of rights—a favorite contrast in German thought. Men like Jeremy Bentham also found the Revolutionary Rights of Man
doctrinaire and conducing to tyranny rather than to freedom. These Rights were a priori, like Duty, being derived from the supposed nature or essence of man, instead of being adopted as empirical expedients to further progress and happiness. But the conception of duty is one-sided, expressing command on one side and obedience on the other, while rights are at least reciprocal. Rights are social and sociable in accord with the spirit of French philosophy. Put in a less abstract form than the revolutionary theory stated them, they are things to be discussed and measured. They admit of more and less, of compromise and adjustment. So also does the characteristic moral contribution of English thought—intelligent self-interest. This is hardly an ultimate idea. But at least it evokes a picture of merchants bargaining, while the categorical imperative calls up the drill sergeant. Trafficking ethics, in which each gives up something which he wants to get something which he wants more, is not the noblest kind of morals, but at least it is socially responsible as far as it goes. "Give so that it may be given to you in return" has at least some tendency to bring men together; it promotes agreement. It
requires deliberation and discussion. This is just what the authoritative voice of a superior will not tolerate; it is the one unforgiveable sin.
The morals of bargaining, exchange, the mutual satisfaction of wants may be outlived in some remote future, but up to the present they play an important part in life. To me there is something uncanny in the scorn which German ethics, in behalf of an unsullied moral idealism, pours upon a theory which takes cognizance of practical motives. In a highly esthetic people one might understand the display of contempt. But when an aggressive and commercial nation carries on commerce and war simply from the motive of obedience to duty, there is awakened an unpleasant suspicion of a suppressed "psychic complex." When Nietzsche says, "Man does not desire happiness; only the Englishman does that," we laugh at the fair hit. But persons who profess no regard for happiness as a test of action have an unfortunate way of living up to their principle by making others unhappy. I should entertain some suspicion of the complete sincerity of those who profess disregard for their own
happiness, but I should be quite certain of their sincerity when it comes to a question of my happiness.
Within the Kantian philosophy of morals there is an idea which conducts necessarily to a philosophy of society and the State. Leibniz was the great German source of the philosophy of the enlightenment. Harmony was the dominant thought of this philosophy; the harmony of nature with itself and with intelligence; the harmony of nature with the moral ends of humanity. Although Kant was a true son of the enlightenment, his doctrine of the radically dual nature of the legislation of Reason put an end to its complacent optimism. According to Kant, morality is in no way a work of nature. It is the achievement of the self-conscious reason of man through conquest of nature. The ideal of a final harmony remains, but it is an ideal to be won through a battle with the natural forces of man. His breach with the enlightenment is nowhere as marked as in his denial that man is by nature good. On the contrary, man is by nature evil—that is, his philosophical rendering of the doctrine of original sin. Not that the passions, appetites and senses are of themselves evil, but they
tend to usurp the sovereignty of duty as the motivating force of human action. Hence morality is a ceaseless battle to transform all the natural desires of man into willing servants of the law and purpose of reason.
Even the kindly and sociable instincts of man, in which so many have sought the basis of both morality and organized society, fall under Kant's condemnation. As natural desires, they aspire to an illegitimate control in man's motives. They are parts of human self-love: the unlawful tendency to make happiness the controlling purpose of action. The natural relations of man to man are those of an unsocial sociableness. On the one hand, men are forced together by natural ties. Only in social relations can individuals develop their capacities. But no sooner do they come together than disintegrating tendencies set in. Union with his fellows give a stimulus to vanity, avarice and gaining power over others—traits which cannot show in themselves in individuals when they are isolated. This mutual antagonism is, however, more of a force in evolving man from savagery to civilization than are the kindly and sociable instincts.
"Without these unlovely qualities which set man over against man in strife, individuals would have lived on in perfect harmony, contentment and mutual love, with all their distinctive abilities latent and undeveloped."
In short, they would have remained in Rousseau's paradise of a state of nature, and