iness, for the knowledge of
this happiness rests on merely empirical or experimental data, every
man's ideas of it being conditioned only on his individual opinion.
Therefore, this principle of happiness cannot prescribe rules for all
rational beings.

But the moral law demands prompt obedience from everyone, and thus even
the most ordinary intelligence can discern what should be done. Everyone
has power to comply with the dictates of morality, but even with regard
to any single aim it is not easy to satisfy the vague precept of
happiness. Nothing could be more absurd than a command that everyone
should make himself happy, for one never commands anyone to do what he
inevitably wishes to do. Finally, in the idea of our practical reason,
there is something which accompanies the violation of a moral
law--namely, its demerit, with the consciousness that punishment is a
natural consequence. Therefore, punishment should be connected in the
idea of practical reason with crime, as a consequence of the crime, by
the principles of moral legislation.

ANALYSIS OF PRINCIPLES

The practical material principles of determination constituting the
basis of morality may be thus classified.

_1. Subjective_

External: Education; the civil constitution. Internal: Physical feeling;
moral feeling.

_2. Objective_

Internal: Perfection. External: Will of God.

The subjective elements are all experimental, or empirical, and cannot
supply the universal principle of morality, though they are expounded in
that sense by such writers as Montaigne, Mandeville, Epicurus, and
Hutcheson.

But the objective elements, as enunciated and expounded by Wolf and the
Stoics, and by Crusius and other theological moralists, are founded on
reason, for absolute perfection as a quality of things (that is, God
Himself) can only be thought of by rational concepts.

The conception of perfection in a practical sense is the adequacy of a
thing for various ends. As a human quality (and so internal) this is
simply talent, and what completes it is skill. But supreme perfection in
substance, that is, God Himself, and therefore external (considered
practically), is the adequacy of this being for all purposes. All these
principles above classified are material, and so can never furnish the
supreme moral law. For even the Divine will can supply a motive in the
human mind because of the expectation of happiness from it.

Therefore, the formal practical principl