The particular purpose for which he is to employ his faculty of inhibition depends on the current moral law of the age, which is determined not by the individual, but by the community. The individual does quite enough and is free of blame if he strives with all his might to approximate his actions to the ideal which the community demands at a given time for the life of its members in common and for their mutual relations. To alter and perfect this ideal is the business of a few select men with wider judgment, stronger will and warmer sympathies than the average. In these exceptional cases it is not the community which imposes its ideal on the individual, but, on the contrary, the individual who works out a new ideal for the community, and, so to speak, thanks to his personal qualities, establishes a new record in the gymnastic of the Will which beats all earlier ones.
Finally, it is true, the individual is dependent on his natural disposition. To say that he can be, and is to be, raised above himself is a very impressive, but really nonsensical, phrase. He can get out of himself only what is in him by nature, and however hard he may try to reach out beyond the boundaries drawn by his organic disposition, he finds it impossible to overstep them. But, as a rule, they are far wider than the individual has any idea of until he attempts to reach them, and he will find many surprises if he labours untiringly to develop to their fullest extent all the possibilities latent in him. Even a born weakling can, by dint of methodical practice, harden his flaccid muscles sufficiently to become a gymnast of average skill, though he is hardly likely to become a first-class athlete.
In just the same way a weak-willed or simple person can by earnest endeavours rise to a consistent morality; if, nevertheless, there appear in him, continually or occasionally, organic impulses which carry him away, it is not his fault but his misfortune. In that case he is subjectively not responsible for his immorality. But the community can, all the same, not liberate him from responsibility, because the law of self-preservation forces it to insist on observance of the moral law, and it has no means of accurately measuring how strong the pressure of instincts and the power of inhibition is in any individual, and to what extent he has fulfilled the duty of exercising and strengthening the latter. The phrase "To understand everything is to forgive everything" shows insight, but is only true in the sense that one must not blame an individual for his natural imperfection. It comprehends recognition of the Will's lack of freedom, and the inadmissibility, from the philosophical point of view, of the concept of responsibility, but it does not affect the right and the duty of the community to demand moral conduct regardless of this lack of freedom. It is not permitted to forgive because it understands. Moreover, there would be no sense in forgiveness by the community, for the concept of forgiveness implies feeling and kindly forgetfulness of an injury inflicted of malice prepense; but insult and offence play no part in the punishment by society of transgressions of the moral law, and indulgence due to sensibility would endanger its existence.
The certainty possessed by the individual that his evil deeds, if they become known, will have evil consequences for him is one of the determining factors which is indispensable in helping him to make a decision. It is an inadmissible affectation to condemn the fear of punishment as a motive for moral action, because it ought to be the result of the conviction that it is absolutely right. It is a powerful aid to self-discipline, as also are the thought and the foretaste of the satisfaction upon which self-respect may count if general respect and praise are to be the reward of exemplary conduct.
The great weakness of the Kantian doctrine of Morality lies in the fact that it retains Free Will, even though it gives it another name. It is called autonomy of Will and is contrasted with heteronomy. This doctrine demands, and considers it possible, that the Will should be its own lawgiver and should not allow others to lay down laws for it; but it fails to examine how the Will comes to make laws for itself, of what hypothesis these laws are the necessary conclusions, by what means the Will secures respect for its law, and whether this seemingly self-imposed law is not really the inner realization of a ready-made law of extraneous origin. The dogma of the autonomy of the Will is a consequence of the preliminary error of excluding utility from Morality and of declaring its imperative to be categorical, that is, not dependent on the aim, but independent and regardless of any aim. The whole tomfoolery of the categorical imperative and of the autonomy of the Will is transcendental mysticism, and is all the more surprising as it is the result of an investigation which claims to be the work of pure Reason. It is the shadow of the ghostly bogies of religious conceptions in the daylight of "pure Reason."
From the point of view of the community we may speak of merit and sin, but not from the subjective point of view. For the community the moral conduct of the individual is useful, immoral conduct is disadvantageous, therefore it praises the one and condemns and punishes the other. That is opportunism, but not moral philosophy. Considered subjectively, moral conduct is just as little meritorious as beauty, great stature, muscular strength, keen intelligence, health, a good memory, prompt reactions of consciousness and all other advantages that the individual has received without his personal intervention as a gift of nature. And immoral conduct is just as little blameworthy as ugliness, stupidity, sickness and other misfortunes which the individual is burdened with by heredity or which a hard fate has imposed on him. Happy is the favoured man! Pitiable the unfortunate one! Both are the work of forces which are absolutely beyond the control of their wills. In the same way the good man acts morally because he possesses insight and restraining will-power, and the bad man acts immorally because these perfections have been denied him, and neither the one nor the other can do anything in the matter.
That does not relieve man of the duty of labouring assiduously at his moral development, but it does relieve him of responsibility for the result of his efforts. On one point the sociological, the biological and the theological moralists agree: they all bow down humbly before Grace.