Comparison of Theories. 
803 
idea of a sum of chopped-up states of happiness is incapable of 
kindling a single emotion in the human heart.” Right in line 
with such a confession as this are the remarks a friend once 
made to me: “I cannot say that I am especially interested in the 
greatest happiness of the greatest number.” The Utilitarian 
formula did not appeal to him as representing an end worth 
sacrificing anything for. It therefore could not, he reasoned, 
be at the root of the distinction between right and wrong. 
‘‘Do Kant’s moral writings mean anything to you,” I was once 
asked by a fellow-student. They meant nothing to him, that 
is to say, they did not represent his experience. And so he 
argued that the account they gave of the moral life must nec¬ 
essarily be false. 
It may be of value to pursue this thought farther by means 
of a comparison between the ethical theories of Kant and 
Schopenhauer. What, according to Kant, is the fundamental 
moral motive and therefore the ultimate ^ground of the approval 
and disapproval of conduct? The soul of man, he tells us, is a 
stranger in a far country. Imprisoned in a body which con¬ 
tinually drags it down to earth, it has never completely lost the 
vision of its true home, the higher world. For the laws which 
govern the pure spiritual beings who inhabit that world are 
graven in indelible characters upon the Walls of the temple of 
his own conscience. In virtue of his rational nature these laws 
are binding upon him also. The fundamental moral motive is 
therefore reverence for the laws and for the persons of the citizens 
of this spiritual commonwealth. In this transcendental origin 
of morality and its freedom from the taint of any connection 
with the world of time and sense lies solely and alone, he tells us, 
its commanding authority. He who refuses obedience condem ns 
himself to self-contempt and inner abhorrence. He who obeys 
has obtained the one unconditional good in life, a beautiful 
character. 
Now what says Schopenhauer to this? Schopenhauer the 
cynic, who found so little in the world to admire besides himself, 
and yet who was his life long the devoted worshipper of Kant. 
He affirms that the idea of obligation which lies at the foundation 
of the Kantian ethics is simply another form of the familiar 
