Page:Karl Kautsky - Ethics and The Materialist Conception of History - tr. J. B. Askew (1906).pdf/48

 universal, and, therefore, also the maxim by which everyone makes this desire determine his will. For, whereas in other cases a universal law of nature makes everything harmonious, here, on the contrary, if we attribute to the maxim the universality of a law, the extreme opposite of harmony will follow the greatest opposition, and the complete destruction of the maxim itself, and its purpose. For, in that case, the will of all has not one and the same object, but everyone has his own (his private welfare), which may accidentally accord with the purposes of others which are equally selfish, but which is far from sufficing for a law, because the occasional exceptions which one is permitted to make are endless, and cannot be definitely embraced in one universal rule. In this manner, then, results a harmony like a married couple bent on going to ruin, 'O marvellous harmony, what he wishes she wishes also,' or, like what is said of the pledge of Francis I. to the Emperor Charles V., 'What my brother Charles wishes, that I wish also' (viz., Milan). Empirical principles of determination are not fit for any universal external legislation, but just as little for internal, for each man makes his own subject the foundation of his inclination, and in the same subject sometimes one inclination, sometimes another, has the preponderance. To discover a law which would govern them all under this condition, bringing them all into harmony, is quite impossible."

Thus pleasure is not to be a maxim which can serve as a principle of universal legislation, and that because it can call forth social disharmonies. The moral law has thus to create a harmonious society, and such must be possible, otherwise it would be absurd to wish to create it.

The Kantian moral law assumes thus in the first place a harmonious society as desirable and possible. But it also assumes that the moral law is the means