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 MORAL PHILOSOPHY 813 rill has the capacity of entire independence self-determination, bound only by its own itonomy. The pure reason proposes to it a liversal law, which we call the moral law, id which is a categorical imperative, requiring unconditioned obedience. This law is, in it's phraseology, the form of human action, passions, and material motives furnish le contents of action, and their influence con- tutes the heteronomy of the will. To ex- ide principles that are merely of a heterono- lic nature, to admit only such motives as may transformed into universal laws of the r ea- rn, so that the autonomy of the will may be iviolate, is the essence of morality. Thus the ical law of Kant is: "Act only on such a dm as may also be a universal law." A rerence for the moral law, which he corn- to the starry heavens, a severance of the raises of sense from moral motives, and an imate of virtue as a triumph over resistance, racterize the Kantian morality. Sanctity is ibsolute conformity to the moral law, the ideal moral perfection. Virtue is a constant ten- dency and progress toward this ideal. The supreme good is the highest happiness joined to the highest virtue. Since these do not cor- respond in the present state, the practical rea- son postulates for the attainment of the first the existence of God, and for the attainment of the second the immortality of the soul. Personal autonomy becomes still more promi- nent in the philosophy of Fichte. According to him, the most profound and essential truth of our existence is the perpetual striving of the mind to develop itself, to realize its own nature, to bring into actual existence all that lies potentially in its consciousness. This fun- damental impulse furnishes the formal princi- ple of ethics, the principle of absolute autonomy, the self -formed aim of being. With it is asso- ciated the impulse of nature, which strives not for fulness and freedom, but for enjoyment. Both impulses aim at a unity, and their ap- proximation is an infinite progression. " The world," says Fichte, "is the sensized material of our practical life, the means by which we place before us, as object, the end and aim of our existence." Destiny is the course of the moral determination of the finite rational being. The formula of ethics is therefore : " Always ilfil thy destiny;" this underlies the whole Bory of particular duties. The conviction duty, or conscience, is the condition of the lorality of actions. A feeling of truth and srtainty is the absolute criterion of the cor- ctness of this conviction, and never deceives, ice it exists only when the empirical is in larmony with the absolute Ego. In the later form of Fichte's philosophy, its moral strict- was relieved by religious sentiment, the jments of the Ego and duty being transformed ito life and love. His formula, making mo- lity the fulfilment of destiny, is akin to the leory of Aristotle, and was adopted by Jouf- >y, the principal moralist of the French eclec- tic school. In ethics alone Schelling scarcely departed from the principles of Fichte. In the system of Hegel, jurisprudence, ethics, and politics form the three divisions of the phi- losophy of mind viewed objectively. The re- moval of the antagonism between the universal and the particular will constitutes morality. To pursue the rational, or what is in accor- dance with the universal will, is right ; to pur- sue the irrational is wrong. The three spheres in which moral purpose appears are the family, civil society, and the state. The state is the ethical whole, the highest embodiment of the moral idea, and its will should be supreme over that of the individual. He thus recurs to the ancient notion of merging ethics in politics, gives to morality a foundation of civil absolu- tism, and regards the rise and fall of states as historical developments of special phases of the reason. Herbart resolves ethics into aesthet- ics. De Wette adopted Jacobi's principle of feeling as the moral lawgiver, and stated the formula: "Live in order to live, and out of pure reverence and love of life ;" and Schleier- macher founded a system of ethics in which prominence is given to personal responsibility, and the invisible kingdom of God is made the highest good. Schopenhauer, in consequence of his peculiar psychology, held that progress could be made only by denial of the lower or sensuous instincts, and taught as the funda- mental principle of his ethics a form of ascet- icism. He held indeed to a generous sympathy with our fellow men in all their sufferings and woes, and would encourage even the most he- roic exertions in their behalf. But in refer- ence to ourselves he inculcated a pretty severe asceticism. The world, in his estimation, so far from being the best possible, is about as bad as it can be ; and while sympathy and the exertions to which it leads tend to alleviate the sufferings of others, asceticism destroys the occasion for sympathy by preventing the evils which excite it. Beneke, however, a contemporary with Schopenhauer, inculcated a system in which morality is based on the feelings. This occasioned the outcry of "Epi- cureanism," and led him to publish a defence, which however, while varying the statements somewhat, left the general character of the doctrines unchanged. (Die beiden Grundprob- leme der Efhik, 1841 ; 2d ed., Leipsic, 1860.) The more recent German works that embrace the subject of moral philosophy are less meta- physical, being based principally on the results of recent physiological and psychological re- searches. They attempt, says Lichthorn, when speaking of the purpose of his own work, Die Erforschung der pJiysiologischen Naturgesetze der menschlichen Geistesthatiglceit (Breslau, 1875), to show that the old metaphysical sepa- ration of body and soul, and the assumption that the relationship is merely mechanical, leads to results contrary to experience; and to establish the possibility of reaching a cor- rect solution by combining the great discov-