Erohifion of Morals. 



277 



natural and causal sequence of motive and action, and the 

 relation of motives to their logical antecedents in thoii^lit. 

 we note the only possible conditions for impi'oving man's 

 moral nature. 



Is human conduct therefore necessitated ? Yes : hut by 

 the nature of man's own being — by no external force; and 

 this nature is therefore largely, though not exclusively, of 

 his own making. The motives which govern his action are 

 a part of his essential being. He necessitates himself, which 

 is only another way of saying that he acts as he freely wills 

 to act. In obedience to laAV, in voluntary conformity to 

 the nature of things, he finds the only pc^ssible n^ality and 

 exercise of freedom. Having arrived at an intelligent con- 

 ception of the laws of conduct, of the end and logical results 

 of his voluntary actions, he is no mere automaton or machine 

 played upon by external forces. He has develoi)ed a gen- 

 uine, though "limited avitonomy, and may justly be held 

 responsible for his moral conduct. 



Kant sees nothing but i)ure determination in the concep- 

 tion of conduct as governed by motives. He compares it 

 to the action of a balance and its weights. Professor Schur- 

 man thus aptly replies to his argument : " Whoever reflects 

 that a motive is merely an idea, and that an idea has no ex- 

 istence apart from the subject that has it, must object to 

 the comparison of a man and his motives to a balance and 

 its weights. The former is merely an ideal, the latter a 

 real duality. Man is nothing apart from his ideas ; but the 

 weights and balance have each an independent existence. 

 Thus, volition, or willing according to motives, is by no 

 means a necessitation. And it was here that Kant failed 

 to see the full significance of his fundamental notion, while 

 contending for an empty shadow which was scarcely the 

 ghost of a living freedom. If freedom be not found in our 

 volition rvith motives and not without them, it dwells not 

 with man, it is nowhere to be found." * Man's conduct 

 being necessitated from within, not from without, under 

 the laAV of motive, he has, if Ave mistake not, a ri'al freedom 

 of action, though it is something quite difterent from the 

 uncaused volition which is assumed by the advocates of the 

 doctrine that the will is a pre-existent entity. 



A fine reconciliation of intuitional with utilitarian ethics 

 is discoverable in the perception of the identity in charac- 



* Schurman's Kantian Ethics, and the Ethics of Evolution. 



