I begin my statement of the ethical ideal with a critique of Kant. The reason for this is that Kant stands forth pre?minent among all philosophers as the one who emphatically asserts that the attribute of inviolability attaches to every human being, in his formula that every man is to be treated as an end per se, and never to be used as a mere tool by others. The formula as thus worded by him is subject to grave objections which will be dealt with later on. But the grand conception of the moral worthwhileness of all men is specially connected with the name of Kant. Did he succeed, on the basis of his system, in establishing this conception? He seems to make it the corner-stone of his ethics. Is the corner-stone secure?  
Referring again to my individual development, I should find it difficult to express how much Kant’s Metaphysik der Sitten and Kritik der praktischen Vernunft at one time meant to me.
 
The one ethical fact of which I was so to speak perfectly assured, the “inviolability” so often mentioned in previous chapters, is extremely hard to justify to the thinking mind. The empirical school of philosophers scoff at the very notion of it. The practice of the world is a perpetual, painful evidence of the small attention74 paid to it, and even idealistic philosophers from Plato down have found it quite possible to construct quasi-ethical systems based on the idea, not of human equality, but of the inferiority of the greater number. In Kant, however, one encounters an epoch-making philosopher who not only accepts as a fact the idea of inviolability, and of the kind of equality that goes with it, but who undertakes to set it forth in such a manner as to command the assent of the reason. For a long time I believed that he had succeeded in his great enterprise; and it was only after years of discipleship, not indeed without suppressed misgivings, that I began to see that I had been mistaken.
 
My eyes were opened when I realized certain extremely questionable moral consequences to which his doctrine led him: for instance, his unspeakable theory of marriage, his defense of capital punishment, the stiff individualism of his system, and his failure to establish an instrumental connection between the empirical goods, of wealth, culture, and the like, and the supreme good or supreme end as defined by him. I was forced by these unsound conclusions to ask myself whether the foundations of the system are sound. Surely if it is true of any system of thought, it is true of an ethical system that it must be judged by its fruits. The Kantian system is indeed vastly impressive, and even sublime in some of its aspects. We travel on the road along which Kant leads with a certain sense of exaltation, but when at the end of our journey we find that we have reached a goal at which we cannot consent to abide, it is imperative to inquire whether the point of departure was well taken.
 
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The point of departure in Kant’s exposition is the existence in all men of a sense of duty. Moral relations subsist only between moral beings. All men possess a sense of duty,—therefore all men are moral beings, therefore all are morally equal,—therefore no one may be used as a mere tool for the benefit of others, but is to be treated as worth while on his own account. Thus runs the argument.
 
The sense of duty is the consciousness of being bound to render implicit obedience to a categorical imperative. Our rational nature tells us categorically what is right to do. Our rational nature issues absolute commands. The sense of duty is man’s response to them. Kant does not for a moment imply that either he or anyone else has ever adequately obeyed. The moral dignity, the moral equality of men, does not depend on the obedience but on the consciousness of the obligation to obey—on acknowledged subjection to the command. The actual moral performances of some men are certainly better than those of others; but of no one, not even of the best of men, can it be shown that the moral principle in its purity, that is, unadulterated by baser incentives, was ever the actuating motive of his conduct. The different members of the human species differ morally in degree, but are of the same moral kind, being distinguished from the lower animals not because they obey the moral law, but because they recognize the obligation to obey it. This sort of consciousness may be dim in some, but it exists in all. The most brutal murderer is dimly aware of the holy law which he has transgressed.
 
The great dictum of the universal moral equality of76 mankind is thus made to depend on an assumed fact. If this fact can be successfully disputed, the dictum itself is imperilled. It has been disputed, not flippantly, but most seriously, and it is in my opinion obnoxious to fatal objections. I do not indeed believe it possible to establish the negative, to wit, that the sense of duty does not lurk somewhere, is not latent somewhere in the consciousness of persons morally the most obtuse; but I hold it to be impossible to prove the affirmative, to wit, that a sense of duty does exist in all human beings, even in the most degraded. Kant’s dictum of equality depends on making good the affirmative proposition, but this he has failed to do.
 
One circumstance especially which at first sight seems favorable to Kant’s contention turns against him. He has been assailed on the ground that his categorical imperative is a fiction, that no such an imperative plays a r?le in the actual experience of men. On the contrary, the actual experience of men is replete with categorical imperatives. Nothing in the life of man plays a greater r?le than these imperatives. The danger that threatens Kant’s demonstration is due to the number of rival categoricals that compete with his, and from which the one he sets up is not with certainty distinguishable. To put the matter simply, what is called in technical language a categorical imperative is nothing else than a way of acting somehow felt by the individual to be obligatory upon him, whether he likes it or dislikes it. It is a constraint in which he is bound to acquiesce, a public rule of some sort which overrides his private propensit............