Page:Karl Kautsky - Ethics and The Materialist Conception of History - tr. J. B. Askew (1906).pdf/47

 with the greatest application of philosophic insight was to be discovered as a principle which applied not only for humanity "but for all finite beings who possess reason and will, nay, even including the infinite being as the highest intelligence."

Unluckily, the proof for this law which was to apply even to the supreme intelligence has a very serious flaw to show. It ought to be "independent of all conditions pertaining to the world of the senses," but that is easier said than fulfilled. Just as little as it is possible with the air-pump to create a completely airless space; just as it must always contain air, though it be in so refined a degree that it is no more to be recognised by us, in the same way we cannot possibly grasp a thought, which is independent of all conditions appertaining to the world of senses. Even the moral law does not escape this fate.

The moral law already includes conditions which belong to the world of the senses. It is not a law of the "pure will" in itself, but a law of the control of my will or thought in contact with my fellow man. It assumes this; for me, however, these are appearances from the world of the senses.

And still more is assumed, however, by the conception of the moral law: "Act so that the maxim of thy action may be a principle of universal legislation." This assumes not only men outside of me, but also the wish that these fellow men should behave themselves in a particular manner. They are to behave themselves as the moral law prescribes me to act.

Here not only society, but also a distinct form of social conditions are assumed as possible and desirable.

That, in fact, the need for such is concealed in the ground of his "Practical Reason," and determines his spaceless and timeless moral law, Kant himself betrays in his "Critique of Practical Reason" in a polemic against the deduction of the moral law out of happiness:

"It is, therefore, surprising that intelligent men should have thought of calling the desire for happiness a universal practical law on the ground that the desire is