410 ETHICS 



my actions; and such a categorical imperative we term duty. Only 

 the dutiful will is good. It is clear that this determination shows 

 an exact analogy to the other norms of judgment in the logical and 

 the sesthetical field. The principle of contradiction states nothing 

 at all with regard to the single thoughts, it only asserts that our think- 

 ing can then alone make a claim upon a logical valuation while it 

 fills the condition which the principle of contradiction states. Like- 

 wise, the impulses of our wills can be morally valued only when they 

 refer to an absolute "Thou shalt;" if this is not the case, they are 

 excluded from the range of valuation, just as the play of our fancy, 

 which does not recognize the principle of contradiction, is excluded 

 from the realm of the norm of scientific thinking. 



Here again the normal action of ethics is represented as a selective 

 process. While the evolutionist ethicist can estimate every single 

 content of human consciousness with reference to the point whether 

 it is preservative of the species or not, and thus give it ethical value, 

 the realm of the Kantian ethics is much more confined. Only those 

 impulses of the will occur with conscious subordination under the 

 command of duty, or in conscious opposition to it fall within the 

 realm of moral valuation. All others and their name is legion - 

 must be termed unmoral. Not as if they become thereby actually 

 valueless; they may stand as high as you please in the intellectual, 

 aesthetic, or religious scale of values. But to bring them under just 

 the moral norms of judgment would be an attempt at an unappli- 

 able object. This is the point, perhaps, where the Kantian ethics 

 gives the hardest shock to the healthy human understanding. It 

 will always seem a paradox that we have a moral act when a man 

 with strong desires for theft, after a severe inner struggle, does not 

 put a silver spoon into his pocket, while the man who omits all this 

 quite as a matter of course may have no claim upon moral desert. 

 And yet each one of us would feel it as an insult, if he should be 

 praised for such omission. The solution of this difficulty lies in the 

 distinction of the value of the single resolve and that of the whole 

 moral personality. The man who is still led into temptation by silver 

 spoons stands morally upon the same plane upon which the scholar 

 stands who struggles with extreme mental effort to calculate a simple 

 example in multiplication. In the case of the more advanced person 

 our moral approval is not aroused because he no longer needs, in 

 this simple case, to appeal to the law of duty, but because we be- 

 lieve that we may conclude that his moral personality is attacking 

 other more difficult problems with full force, and that he is here in 

 himself feeling the full weight of the contest. If we were deceived 

 in this, if it prove true that he, content with what had been attained, 

 had withdrawn to the position of the ethical capitalist, our ethical 

 interest in him would likewise cease, just as our intellectual interest 



