Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller

Pure reason, therefore, contains not indeed in its specu648 Canon of Piwe Reason lative, yet in its practical, or, more accurately, its moral employment, principles of the possibility of experie1^ce^ namely, of such actions as might be met with in the history of man according to moral precepts. For as reason commands that such actions should take place, they must be possible, and a certain kind of systematical unity also, namely, the moral, must be possible ; while it was impossible to prove the systematical unity of nature accordijig to the speculative principles of reason. For reason, no doubt, possesses causality with respect to freedom in general, but not with respect to the whole of nature, and moral principles of reason may indeed produce free actions, but not laws of nature. Consequently, the principles of pure reason possess objective reality in their practi- [p. 808] cal and more particularly in their moral employment.

I call the world, in so far as it may be in accordance with all moral laws which, by virtue of the freedom of rational beings it may, and according to the necessary laws of morality it ought to be, a moral world. As here we take no account of all conditions (aims) and even of all impediments to morality (the weakness or depravity of human nature), this world is conceived as an intelligible world only. It is, therefore, so far a mere idea, though a practical idea, which can and ought really to exercise its influence on the sensible world in order to bring it, as far as possible, into conformity with that idea. The idea of a moral world has therefore objective reality, not as referring to an object of intelligible intuition (which we cannot even conceive), but as referring to the sensible world, conceived as an object of pure reason in its practical employment, and as a corpus mysticum of rational beings dwelling in it, so far as their free-will, placed under

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moral laws, possesses a thorough systematical unity both with itself and with the freedom of everybody else.

The answer, therefore, of the first of the two questions ] of pure reason with reference to practical in- [p. 809] terests, is this, ^ do that which will render thee deserving of happiness! The second question asks, how then, if I conduct myself so as to be deserving of happiness, may I hope thereby to obtain happiness ? The answer to this question depends on this, whether the principles of pure reason which a priori prescribe the law, necessarily also ^ connect this hope with it ?

I say, then, that just as the moral principles are necessary according to reason in its practical employment, it is equally necessary according to reason in its theoretic employment to assume that everybody has reason to hope to obtain happiness in the same measure in which he has rendered himself deserving of it in his conduct ; and that, therefore, the system of morality is inseparably, though only in the idea of pure reason, connected with that of happiness.

In an intelligible, that is, in a moral world, in conceiving which we take no account of any of the impediments to morality (desires, etc.), such a system, in which happiness is proportioned to morality, may even be considered as necessary, because freedom, as repelled or restrained by the moral law, is itself the cause of general happiness, and rational beings therefore themselves, under the guidance of such principles, the authors of the permanent well-being of themselves, and at the same time of others. But such a system of self-rewarding morality is [p. 810] an idea only, the realisation of which depends on everybody doing what he ought to do, that is, on all actions of

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