elements of ethics, for feeling by whatever it may be excited is
always physical. But then ethical teaching, whether in schools, or
lecture-rooms, etc., is corrupted in its source. For it is not a
matter of indifference by what motives or means one is led to a good
purpose (the obedience to duty). However disgusting, then, metaphysics
may appear to those pretended philosophers who dogmatize oracularly,
or even brilliantly, about the doctrine of duty, it is,
nevertheless, an indispensable duty for those who oppose it to go back
to its principles even in ethics, and to begin by going to school on
its benches.



We may fairly wonder how, after all previous explanations of the
principles of duty, so far as it is derived from pure reason, it was
still possible to reduce it again to a doctrine of happiness; in
such a way, however, that a certain moral happiness not resting on
empirical causes was ultimately arrived at, a self-contradictory
nonentity. In fact, when the thinking man has conquered the
temptations to vice, and is conscious of having done his (often
hard) duty, he finds himself in a state of peace and satisfaction
which may well be called happiness, in which virtue is her own reward.
Now, says the eudaemonist, this delight, this happiness, is the real
motive of his acting virtuously. The notion of duty, says be, does not
immediately determine his will; it is only by means of the happiness
in prospect that he is moved to his duty. Now, on the other hand,
since he can promise himself this reward of virtue only from the
consciousness of having done his duty, it is clear that the latter
must have preceded: that is, be must feel himself bound to do his duty
before he thinks, and without thinking, that happiness will be the