74, INTELLIGENCE AND MORALS 



are will be good enough for &quot; practical &quot; men, 

 since they are then left free to their own devices 

 in turning these to their own account. As long as 

 moralists plume themselves upon possession of the 

 domain of the categorical imperative with its bare 

 precepts, men of executive habits will always be at 

 their elbows to regulate the concrete social condi 

 tions through which the form of law gets its actual 

 filling of specific injunctions. When freedom is 

 conceived to be transcendental, the coercive re 

 straint of immediate necessity will lay its harsh 

 hand upon the mass of men. 



In the end, men do what they can do. They 

 refrain from doing what they cannot do. They 

 do what their own specific powers in conjunction 

 with the limitations and resources of the environ 

 ment permit. The effective control of their powers 



^ is not through precepts, but through the regula 

 tion of their conditions. If this regulation is to 

 be not merely physical or coercive, but moral, it 



, must consist of the intelligent selection and de 

 termination of the environments in which we act; 

 and in an intelligent exaction of responsibility for 

 the use of men s powers. Theorists inquire after 

 the &quot; motive &quot; to morality, to virtue and the good, 

 under such circumstances. What then, one won 

 ders, is their conception of the make-up of human 

 nature and of its relation to virtue and to good 

 ness? The pessimism that dictates such a ques- 



