PROBLEMS OF ETHICS 409 



proved, in the first place, that this predicate can be properly applied 

 to no action whatever, that we can speak of a good action in figur- 

 ative language only, when we believe that we can make from this 

 action an inference with regard to something else, the disposition 

 of the actor; and that the same action which we do not hesitate 

 to describe as good, on the supposition of the correctness of this 

 inference, loses directly this character as soon as doubt of the cor- 

 rectness of the inference arises. This disposition, which we distin- 

 guish in this way, which forms the substrate of our moral valuation, 

 we call the good will, and the Magna Charta of the Kantian ethics 

 consists in the celebrated thesis: Nothing can possibly be good 

 except a good will. This reasoning appears to be as self-evident 

 as its result is important. 



The whole ethical process is removed within the soul. While the 

 theory of evolution and, still more, utilitarianism could still hope 

 to obtain, with the character of the work, at the same time an ex- 

 pression with regard to the ethical value of the action; while, in this 

 combination of ideas, the ethical goodness of the disposition could 

 be judged by the usefulness or value to civilization of the performance 

 done, so that both these systems would have essentially the character 

 of an ethics of results, we have in Kant and his successors, most 

 decidedly, an ethics of dispositions. It has rightly been pointed 

 out that this ethics could grow only upon Protestant soil, that here 

 the same contradiction prevails which Luther once summed up in the 

 words: "Good works do not make the good man, but the good man 

 creates good works." All the excellences, but all the weaknesses 

 also, of Protestantism, cling to Kant's ethics. 



First, let us follow the further stages of Kant's thought. How 

 must a good will be constituted, so that we may count it as ethically 

 good? All our acts happen in order to fulfill a purpose. The character 

 of the action depends upon the character of the purpose, which the 

 actor proposes for himself, which he affirms with his will, which he 

 makes his own. But if the purpose be no longer willed, then all the 

 actions cease, which hitherto had had to be accomplished for its 

 fulfillment. All those purposes, which under the circumstances 

 cannot be willed, cannot therefore produce that lasting constitution 

 of the will which we understand under the term the good will. But 

 among the different motivations of the will, there are some which 

 for the observer become separated. They have not a character such 

 that they could, under any circumstances, cease to motivate the 

 will; they are necessary and universal determinations of the will. 

 The imperative which they contain and with which they demand 

 action has not the hypothetical form: "If thou wilt obtain this or 

 that, you must; " but the absolute: " Thou shalt." It is a categorical 

 imperative, to which the will is here subordinated, which determines 



