ecessary has thus an imperative character, the feeling
experienced will be that of approbation. If necessity has the character
of a want, the feeling experienced will be that of pleasure, and both
will be strong in proportion as the satisfaction will be contingent.
Now, underlying every moral judgment there is a requirement of reason
which requires us to act conformably with the moral law, and it is an
absolute necessity that we should wish what is good. But as the will is
free, it is physically an accidental thing that we should do in fact what
is good. If we actually do it, this agreement between the contingent in
the use of free will and the imperative demand of reason gives rise to
our assent or approbation, which will be greater in proportion as the
resistance of the inclinations made this use that we make of our free
will more accidental and more doubtful. Every aesthetic judgment, on the
contrary, refers the object to the necessity which cannot help willing
imperatively, but only desires that there should be an agreement between
the accidental and its own interest. Now what is the interest of
imagination? It is to emancipate itself from all laws, and to play its
part freely. The obligation imposed on the will by the moral law, which
prescribes its object in the strictest manner, is by no means favorable
to this need of independence. And as the moral obligation of the will is
the object of the moral judgment, it is clear that in this mode of
judging, the imagination could not find its interest. But a moral
obligation imposed on the will cannot be conceived, except by supposing
this same will absolutely independent of the moral instincts and from
their constraint. Accordingly the possibility of the moral act requires
liberty, and therefore agrees here in the most perfect manner with the
interest of imagination. But as imagination, through the medium of its
wants, cannot give orders to the will of the individual, as reason does
by its imperative character, it follows that the faculty of freedom, in
relation to imagination, is something accidental, and consequently that
the agreement between the accidental and the necessary (conditionally
necessary) must excite pleasure. Therefore, if we bring to bear a moral
judgment on this act of Leonidas, we shall consider it from a point of
view where its accidental character strikes the eye less than its
necessary side. If, on the other hand, we apply the aesthetical judgment
to