the forcible expression of this truth seems to have left it in the air. I scrutinize my neighbors, and find in their behavior no sure sign of real worth. I fall back on myself and I discover what? The idea of an act which, if I could perform it, would stand on its own merits (would be self-justified). I then find that I am bound to try to perform such acts. I cannot affirm that in a single instance I have ever performed such an act. I next infer—on what tenuous ground has been shown in the last chapter—that my fellow-beings have the same inner experience as mine. And it is for this reason that by a circuitous inference I declare them to be worth while objects. That Kant has formulated a truth of the utmost importance for mankind (that no man is to be treated as a mere tool), seems to me incontestable. That he has not made good his own proposition is my contention, and that the whole problem must therefore be taken up _de novo_. It will assist us in doing so to expose the flaw in his categorical imperative, or the formal principle of universality and necessity applied to human actions, which in his view imprints upon them the character of absolute rightness. Note that Kant approaches the problems of ethics from the side of physical science, and with the bias of the physical scientist. The ethical principle he sets up, the bare idea of universal necessity or of law in general, is derived by way of abstraction from the particular laws of nature. It is a physical principle in disguise. To understand Kant’s system, it is simply indispensable to keep this point in mind. He was pre-occupied during the major portion of his life with profound speculations on scientific subjects. The title of the _Critique of Pure Reason_ might not be inappropriately changed into “A treatise on the fundamental assumptions of science, as handled by Newton and his successors.” He was undeniably interested in ethics. His ultimate aim was to clear the way for the confident holding of ethical principles. (See the Preface to the _Critique of Pure Reason_.) But he could not divest himself of the prejudice of his temperament and of his lifelong pursuit. He is not singular in this respect. To borrow the first principle of ethics from some other field is a common and apparently ineradicable error. Mechanics, æsthetics, and recently biology, have been laid under contribution for this purpose. A consistent attempt to study ethical phenomena on their own ground, to mark off what is really distinctive in the data of ethical experience, and then to search for some principle which shall serve to give a coherent account of them, has to my knowledge never yet been undertaken. Always ethics has been treated as an annex to some other discipline. Always we behold the attempt to assimilate before the distinctive traits and characteristics have been carefully investigated. Never yet has the independence of this wonderful aspect of human nature been truly acknowledged. Kant