sentiment than could be inspired by any one of the constituent realities." 1

We have examined the extreme rationalistic and empiristic views of conscience. According to one school, conscience is a natural endowment of man; the moral truths are inherent in his very nature; his soul is a tablet with moral laws written upon it. According to the other, conscience is not original, but acquired in the life of the individual. The soul is at birth an empty tablet, having no moral truths written upon it.

cism.

7. Reconciliation of Intuitionism and EmpiriLet us now consider some attempts that have been made to reconcile this opposition. Kant approaches the problem from the rationalistic side, Spencer from the empiristic.2 Kant repudiates the extreme rationalistic thesis that we have an innate knowledge of particular moral truths, and regards as the a priori element the category of obligation, a general moral form whose content is filled by experience. Spencer, on the other hand, concedes the

1 Emotions, 3d ed., chap. xv, §§ 18 ff.; The Will, chap. x, especially §§ 8 ff.; also chapter on "Moral Faculty," in Mental and Moral Science. For criticism of Bain, see Calderwood, Handbook, Part. I, Div. II, chap. iii.

2 It is worthy of note that both of these philosophers were at one time believers in the moral-sense doctrine of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. See p. 41, note 3, and Spencer's first edition of the Social Statics.

8 His theory reminds one of the medieval conception of the synderesis.

presence of an a priori element, and denies that the conscience is merely an acquisition of individual experience. Let us examine the views of these thinkers a little more in detail.

1

(1) In his Kritik of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant asks the question, How is knowledge possible, or how is it possible that man can make synthetic judgments a priori? Experience furnishes us with only a limited number of cases; it cannot give us universality and necessity. Are these universal and necessary truths innate, as old rationalism asserted? Not exactly, Kant answers. The mind is endowed with certain functions or principles or forms or categories, which are not derived from experience, but are prior to experience, hence a priori or pure. Though we may not be conscious of them, they act in every rational creature. The senses furnish the mind with the raw materials, while the sensibility and the understanding, the two powers of the mind, arrange them according to the forms of space, time, causality, etc. Thus, for example, I see all things in space because my mind functions according to the space form. When I judge that heat expands bodies, I have ideas of heat, expansion, and bodies, elements ultimately furnished by sensation, and the idea that the heat is the cause of the expansion, the notion of

1 1729-1804. For Kant's ethics, see Cohen, Kant's Begründung der Ethik; Schurman, Kantian Ethics and the Ethics of Evolution; Porter, Kant's Ethics; Paulsen, Kant; translation of Kant's ethical writings by Abbott, Kant's Theory of Ethics.

causality, which is not derived from sensation, but which is a way my intellect has of looking at things. These forms or categories are, as it were, the colored glasses through which the theoretical reason views the world.1

However, we approach the world not merely from the theoretical standpoint, but from the practical or moral standpoint; we say not only what is, but what ought to be. The reason not only arranges its phenomena in space, time, and according to the causal law, but also commands that they be arranged according to the moral law. Its commands are unconditional, absolute, or categorical imperatives; it speaks with authority: Thou shalt, Thou shalt not. "The theoretical use of reason is that by which I know a priori (as necessary) that something is, while the practical use of reason is that by which I know a priori what ought to be." I assume that there really exist pure moral laws, which determine completely a priori the conduct of every rational creature. I can with justice presuppose the proposition because I can appeal not only to the proofs of the most enlightened moralists, but also to the moral judgment of every human being.2

Now the question is, How is all this possible? Knowledge is possible, as we have seen, because of

1 For Kant's theory of knowledge, see the histories of philosophy, e.g., Weber, where a bibliography is found.

2 Kritik of Pure Reason, Max Müller's translation, pp. 510, 647. See also Abbott's translation of the ethical writings, pp. 28, 97 f., 119, 136,

certain innate or a priori forms or conditions which make it necessary for the mind to function as it functions. But how is morality possible? Are the different imperatives or moral laws innate, as Cudworth and men of his ilk would assert? No, says Kant, not exactly. But there is present in the practical reason a formal principle or condition, a form or category of obligation or oughtness, not derived from experience, but prior to it, a priori, a universally valid law, by virtue of which man is a moral being. And, what does this categorical imperative enjoin? we ask. Kant answers, "Act so that the maxim of thy will can always at the same time hold good as a principle of universal legislation."2 That is, do not perform acts of which thou canst not will that they become universal. deceiver cannot will that lying should become a universal law, for with such a law there would be no promises at all; and his maxim would necessarily destroy itself. This law or maxim is valid for all rational creatures generally, not only under certain contingent conditions, but with absolute necessity. Although common men do not conceive it in such an abstract and universal form, yet they always really have it before their eyes, and use it as the standard of their decision.3

1 See Abbott, Kant's Theory of Ethics, p. 28.

2 Ib., pp. 17 ff., 38 ff.

The

"Man

8 Ib., pp. 20, 21, 93, 120 note, 192, 311, 321, 343. (even the worst) does not in any maxim, as it were, rebelliously abandon the moral law (and renounce obedience to it). On the

There is, then, a moral imperative inherent in the very nature of man, which categorically commands. But the question is, Whence does it come? Is it the voice of a suprasensible being speaking in the heart of man? In a certain sense, yes. It is the product of the free will, of the intelligible ego, of the thing-in-itself. "Freedom is the ratio essendi of the moral law," that is, the free will imposes the law upon itself; and the moral law is "the ratio cognoscendi of freedom," that is, we must logically conclude from the fact that there is a categorical imperative in us, that there is a free will which imposes it.2 "The question, then, how a categorical imperative is possible, can be answered to this extent, that we can assign the only hypothesis on which it is possible, namely, the idea of freedom; and we can also discern the necessity of this hypothesis, and this is sufficient for the practical exercise of reason, that is, for the conviction of the validity of this imperative, and hence of the moral law: but how this hypothesis itself is possible can never be discerned by any human reason.

3

contrary, this forces itself upon him irresistibly by virtue of his moral nature, and if no other spring opposed it, he would also adopt it into his ultimate maxim as the adequate determining principle of his elective will, that is, he would be morally good."

1 Abbott, Kant's Theory of Ethics, pp. 65 ff. Green: "It is the very essence of moral duty to be imposed by man upon himself." 2" I can because I must."

3 Ib., p. 81. See also p. 84: "It is, therefore, no fault in our deduction of the supreme principle of morality, but an objection