pure practical reason and, therefore, also to the moral disposition,
even though the resulting action may be conformable to the law.



REMARK.



Hence a practical precept, which contains a material (and
therefore empirical) condition, must never be reckoned a practical
law. For the law of the pure will, which is free, brings the will into
a sphere quite different from the empirical; and as the necessity
involved in the law is not a physical necessity, it can only consist
in the formal conditions of the possibility of a law in general. All
the matter of practical rules rests on subjective conditions, which
give them only a conditional universality (in case I desire this or
that, what I must do in order to obtain it), and they all turn on
the principle of private happiness. Now, it is indeed undeniable
that every volition must have an object, and therefore a matter; but
it does not follow that this is the determining principle and the
condition of the maxim; for, if it is so, then this cannot be
exhibited in a universally legislative form, since in that case the
expectation of the existence of the object would be the determining
cause of the choice, and the volition must presuppose the dependence
of the faculty of desire on the existence of something; but this
dependence can only be sought in empirical conditions and,
therefore, can never furnish a foundation for a necessary and
universal rule. Thus, the happiness of others may be the object of the
will of a rational being. But if it were the determining principle