* A maxim is the subjective principle of volition. The objective
principle (i.e., that which would also serve subjectively as a
practical principle to all rational beings if reason had full power
over the faculty of desire) is the practical law.



Thus the moral worth of an action does not lie in the effect
expected from it, nor in any principle of action which requires to
borrow its motive from this expected effect. For all these effects-
agreeableness of one's condition and even the promotion of the
happiness of others- could have been also brought about by other
causes, so that for this there would have been no need of the will
of a rational being; whereas it is in this alone that the supreme
and unconditional good can be found. The pre-eminent good which we
call moral can therefore consist in nothing else than the conception
of law in itself, which certainly is only possible in a rational
being, in so far as this conception, and not the expected effect,
determines the will. This is a good which is already present in the
person who acts accordingly, and we have not to wait for it to
appear first in the result. *



* It might be here objected to me that I take refuge behind the
word respect in an obscure feeling, instead of giving a distinct
solution of the question by a concept of the reason. But although
respect is a feeling, it is not a feeling received through
influence, but is self-wrought by a rational concept, and,
therefore, is specifically distinct from all feelings of the former