I begin my statement of the ethical ideal with a critique of Kant. The reason for this is that Kant stands forth preëminent among all philosophers as the one who emphatically asserts that the attribute of inviolability attaches to every human being, in his formula that _every_ man is to be treated as an end _per se_, and never to be used as a mere tool by others. The formula as thus worded by him is subject to grave objections which will be dealt with later on. But the grand conception of the moral worthwhileness of all men is specially connected with the name of Kant. Did he succeed, on the basis of his system, in establishing this conception? He seems to make it the corner-stone of his ethics. Is the corner-stone secure? Referring again to my individual development, I should find it difficult to express how much Kant’s _Metaphysik der Sitten_ and _Kritik der praktischen Vernunft_ at one time meant to me. The one ethical fact of which I was so to speak perfectly assured, the “inviolability” so often mentioned in previous chapters, is extremely hard to justify to the thinking mind. The empirical school of philosophers scoff at the very notion of it. The practice of the world is a perpetual, painful evidence of the small attention paid to it, and even idealistic philosophers from Plato down have found it quite possible to construct quasi-ethical systems based on the idea, not of human equality, but of the inferiority of the greater number. In Kant, however, one encounters an epoch-making philosopher who not only accepts as a fact the idea of inviolability, and of the kind of equality that goes with it, but who undertakes to set it forth in such a manner as to command the assent of the reason. For a long time I believed that he had succeeded in his great enterprise; and it was only after years of discipleship, not indeed without suppressed misgivings, that I began to see that I had been mistaken. My eyes were opened when I realized certain extremely questionable moral consequences to which his doctrine led him: for instance, his unspeakable theory of marriage, his defense of capital punishment, the stiff individualism of his system, and his failure to establish an instrumental connection between the empirical goods, of wealth, culture, and the like, and the supreme good or supreme end as defined by him. I was forced by these unsound conclusions to ask myself whether the foundations of the system are sound. Surely if it is true of any system of thought, it is true of an ethical system that it must be judged by its fruits. The Kantian system is indeed vastly impressive, and even sublime in some of its aspects. We travel on the road along which Kant leads with a certain sense of exaltation, but when at the end of our journey we find that we have reached a goal at which we cannot consent to abide, it is imperative to inquire whether the point of departure was well taken.