nduly into
the background. The principle of happiness represents moral empiricism, the
principle of perfection moral rationalism. Kant resolves the antithesis
by restricting the theses of the respective parties within their proper
limits: "Make _thine own perfection_ and _the happiness of others_ the end
of thy actions;" these are the only ends which are at the same time duties.
The perfection of others is excluded by the fact that I cannot impart
to anyone a good disposition, for everyone must acquire it for himself;
personal happiness by the fact that everyone seeks it naturally.

This antithesis (which is crossed by the further distinction between
perfect, _i.e._, indispensable, and imperfect duties) serves as a basis for
the division of moral duties into duties toward ourselves and duties toward
other men.[1] The former enjoin the preservation and development of our
natural and moral powers, the latter are duties of obligation (of respect)
or of merit (of love). Since no one can obligate me to feel, we are to
understand by love not the pathological love of complacency, but only the
active love of benevolence or practical sympathy. Since it is just as
impossible that the increase of the evils in the world should be a duty,
the enervating and useless excitation of pity, which adds to the pain of
the sufferer the sympathetic pain of the spectator, is to be struck off
the list of virtues, and active readiness to aid put in its place. In
friendship love and respect unite in exact equipoise. Veracity is one of
the duties toward self; lying is an abandonment of human dignity and under
no conditions allowable, not even if life depends on it.

[Footnote 1: All duties are toward men, not toward supra-human or
infra-human beings. That which we commonly term duties toward animals,
likewise the so-called duties toward God, are in reality duties toward
ourselves. Cruelty to animals is immoral, because our sympathies are
blunted by it. To have religion is a duty to ourselves, because the view of
moral laws as laws of God is an aid to morality.]

After it has been settled what the categorical imperative enjoins, the
further problem awaits us of explaining how it is possible. The categorical
imperative is possible only on I the presupposition of our _freedom_. Only
a free being gives laws to itself, just as an autonomous being alone is
free. In theoretical philosophy the pure self-consciousness, the "I think,"
denoted a point where