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

reasonable beings being so performed as if they sprang from one supreme will, comprehending within itself or under itself all private wills.

But, as the moral law remains binding upon every one in the use of his freedom, even if others do not conform to that law, it is impossible that either the nature of things in the world, or the causality of the actions themselves, or their relation to morality, should determine in what relation the consequences of such actions should stand to happiness.

If, therefore, we take our stand on nature only, the necessary connection of a hope of happiness with the unceasing endeavour of rendering oneself deserving of happiness, cannot be known by reason, but can only be hoped for, if a highest reason^ which rules according to moral laws, is accepted at the same time as the cause of nature.

I call the idea of such an intelligence in which the most perfect moral will, united with the highest blessedness, is the cause of all happiness in the world, so far as it corresponds exactly with morality, that is, the being worthy of happiness, the ideal of the supreme good. It is, therefore, in the ideal only of the supreme origijial good that pure reason can find the ground of the practically necessary connection of both elements of the highest [p. 811] derivative good, namely, of an intelligible, that is, moral world. As we are bound by reason to conceive ourselves as belonging necessarily to such a world, though the senses present us with nothing but a world of phenomena, we shall have to accept the other world as the result of our conduct in this world of sense (in which we see no such connection between goodness and happiness), and therefore as to us a future world. Hence it follows that God and a future life are two suppositions which, accordCanon of Pure Reason 65 1 ing to the principles of pure reason, cannot be separated from the obhgation which that very reason imposes on us.

MoraHty, by itself, constitutes a system, but not so happiness, unless it is distributed in exact proportion to morality. This, however, is possible in an intelligible world only under a wise author and ruler. Such a ruler, together with life in such a world, which we must consider as future, reason compels us to admit, unless all moral laws are to be considered as idle dreams, because, without that supposition, the necessary consequences, which the same reason connects with these laws, would be absent. Hence everybody looks upon moral laws as commands^ which they could not be if they did not connect a priori adequate consequences with their rules, and carried with them both promises and threats. Nor could they do this unless they rested on a necessary Being, as the supreme good, which alone can render the [p. 812] unity of such a design possible.

Leibniz called the world, if we have regard only to the rational beings in it, and their mutual relations according to moral laws and under the government of the supreme good, the kingdom of grace, distinguishing it from the kingdo7n of nature, in which these beings, though standing under moral laws, expect no other consequences from their conduct but such as follow according to the course of nature of our sensible world. To view ourselves as belonging to the kingdom of grace, in which all happiness awaits us, except in so far as we have diminished our share in it through our unworthiness of being happy, is a practically necessary idea of reason.

Practical laws, in so far as they become at the same time subjective grounds of actions, that is, subjective

652 Canon of Pzwe Reason