THE ETHICS OF KANT. 477 



truth, is that conscience, or the sense of duty, is an inclination of 

 a high and complex kind as distinguished from inclinations of 

 lower and simpler kinds. 



But let us grant Kant's distinction in an unqualified form. 

 Doing this, let us entertain, too, his proposition that acts of what- 

 ever kind done from inclination have no moral worth, and that the 

 only acts having moral worth are those done from a sense of duty. 

 To test this proposition let us follow an example he sets. As he 

 would have the quality of an act judged by supposing it univer- 

 salized, let us judge of moral worth as he conceives it by making 

 a like supposition. That we may do this effectually let us suppose 

 that it is exemplified not only by every man but by all the acts of 

 every man. Unless Kant alleges that a man may be morally wor- 

 thy in too high a degree, we must admit that the greater the num- 

 ber of his acts which have moral worth the better. Let us then 

 contemplate him as doing nothing from inclination but every- 

 thing from a sense of duty. 



When he pays the laborer who has done a week's work for him, 

 it is not because letting a man go without wages would be against 

 his inclination, but solely because he sees it to be a duty to fulfill 

 contracts. Such care as he takes of his aged mother is prompted 

 not by tender feeling for her but by the consciousness of filial ob- 

 ligation. When he gives evidence on behalf of a man whom he 

 knows to have been falsely charged, it is not that he would be hurt 

 by seeing the man wrongly punished, but simply in pursuance of 

 a moral intuition showing him that public duty requires him to 

 testify. When he sees a little child in danger of being run over, 

 and steps aside to snatch it away, he does so not because the im- 

 pending death of the child pains him, but because he knows it is 

 a duty to save life. And so throughout, in all his relations as 

 husband, as friend, as citizen, he thinks always of what the law of 

 right conduct directs, and does it because it is the law of right 

 conduct, not because he satisfies his affections or his sympathies 

 by doing it. This is not all however. Kant's doctrine commits 

 him to something far beyond this. If those acts only have moral 

 worth which are done from a sense of duty, we must not only say 

 that the moral worth of a man is greater in proportion as the 

 number of the acts so done is greater ; but we must say that his 

 moral worth is greater in proportion as the strength of his sense 

 of duty is such that he does the right thing not only apart from 

 inclination but against inclination. According to Kant, then, the 

 most moral man is the man whose sense of duty is so strong that 

 he refrains from picking a pocket though he is much tempted to 

 do it ; who says of another that which is true though he would 

 like to injure him by a falsehood ; who lends money to his brother 

 though he would prefer to see him in distress ; who fetches the 



