this doctrine he is practically at one with the popular teaching of his
own pietistic background, and with Calvinism as it prevailed with many
of the religiously-minded of his day. In its extreme statements the
latter reminds one of the pagan and oriental dualisms which so long ran
parallel to the development of Christian thought and so profoundly
influenced it.

Kant's system is not at one with itself at this point. According to him
the natural inclinations of men are such as to produce a never-ending
struggle between duty and desire. To desire to do a thing made him
suspicious that he was not actuated by the pure spirit of duty in doing
it. The sense in which man may be in his nature both a child of God,
and, at the same time, part of the great complex of nature, was not yet
clear either to Kant or to his opponents. His pessimism was a reflection
of his moral seriousness. Yet it failed to reckon with that which is yet
a glorious fact. One of the chief results of doing one's duty is the
gradual escape from the desire to do the contrary. It is the gradual
fostering by us, the ultimate dominance in us, of the desire to do that
duty. Even to have seen one's duty is the dawning in us of this high
desire. In the lowest man there is indeed the superficial desire to
indulge his passions. There is also the latent longing to be conformed
to the good. There is the sense that he fulfils himself then only when
he is obedient to the good. One of the great facts of spiritual
experience is this gradual, or even sudden, inversion of standard within
us. We do really cease to desire the things which are against right
reason and conscience. We come to desire the good, even if it shall cost
us pain and sacrifice to do it. Paul could write: 'When I would do good,
evil is present with me.' But, in the vividness of his identification of
his willing self with his better self against his sinning self, he could
also write: 'So then it is no more I that do the sin.' _Das radicale