of our happiness and not far removed from the moral nobility of human
nature. I shall plead this cause of the beautiful before a heart by
which her whole power is felt and exercised, and which will take upon
itself the most difficult part of my task in an investigation where one
is compelled to appeal as frequently to feelings as to principles.

That which I would beg of you as a favor, you generously impose upon me
as a duty; and, when I solely consult my inclination, you impute to me a
service. The liberty of action you prescribe is rather a necessity for
me than a constraint. Little exercised in formal rules, I shall scarcely
incur the risk of sinning against good taste by any undue use of them; my
ideas, drawn rather from within than from reading or from an intimate
experience with the world, will not disown their origin; they would
rather incur any reproach than that of a sectarian bias, and would prefer
to succumb by their innate feebleness than sustain themselves by borrowed
authority and foreign support.

In truth, I will not keep back from you that the assertions which follow
rest chiefly upon Kantian principles; but if in the course of these
researches you should be reminded of any special school of philosophy,
ascribe it to my incapacity, not to those principles. No; your liberty
of mind shall be sacred to me; and the facts upon which I build will be
furnished by your own sentiments; your own unfettered thought will
dictate the laws according to which we have to proceed.

With regard to the ideas which predominate in the practical part of
Kant's system, philosophers only disagree, whilst mankind, I am confident
of proving, have never done so. If stripped of their technical shape,
they will appear as the verdict of reason pronounced from time immemorial
by common consent, and as facts of the moral instinct which nature, in