character which he proposed to assert for the practical reason. Kant's
scepticism is therefore very different from that of Hume. It does not
militate against the profoundest religious conviction. Yet it prepared
the way for some of the just claims of modern agnosticism.

According to Kant, it is as much the province of the practical reason to
lay down laws for action as it is the province of pure reason to
determine the conditions of thought, though the practical reason can
define only the form of action which shall be in the spirit of duty. It
cannot present duty to us as an object of desire. Desire can be only a
form of self-love. In the end it reckons with the advantage of having
done one's duty. It thus becomes selfish and degraded. The
identification of duty and interest was particularly offensive to Kant.
He was at war with every form of hedonism. To do one's duty because one
expects to reap advantage is not to have done one's duty. The doing of
duty in this spirit simply resolves itself into a subtler and more
pervasive form of selfishness. He castigates the popular presentation of
religion as fostering this same fault. On the other hand, there is a
trait of rigorism in Kant, a survival of the ancient dualism, which was
not altogether consistent with the implications of his own philosophy.
This philosophy afforded, as we have seen, the basis for a monistic view
of the universe. But to his mind the natural inclinations of man are
opposed to good conscience and sound reason. He had contempt for the
shallow optimism of his time, according to which the nature of man was
all good, and needed only to be allowed to run its natural course to
produce highest ethical results. He does not seem to have penetrated to
the root of Rousseau's fallacy, the double sense in which he constantly
used the words 'nature' and 'natural.' Otherwise, Kant would have been
able to repudiate the preposterous doctrine of Rousseau, without himself
falling back upon the doctrine of the radical evil of human nature. In