Is it on grounds of sympathy that I should observe the so-called moral rules? But if I am not sympathetic by nature, why should I be subject to censure in case I refrain from displaying a tenderness which I do not feel? Why should I sympathize with the pleasures and pains of fellow human beings any more than with the pleasures and pains of inferior sentient creatures, unless men have worth? And worth, as will appear in the subsequent chapters, signifies indispensableness in a perfect whole. No detached thing has worth. No part of an incomplete system has worth. Worth belongs to those to whom it is attributed in so far as they are conceived of as not to be spared, as representing a distinctive indispensable preciousness, a mode of being without which perfection would be less than perfect. So that morality depends on the attribution of worth to men, and worth depends on the formation in the mind of an ideal plan of the whole—or instead of a complete plan let me say more precisely a rule of relations whereby the plan is itself progressively developed. CHAPTER IV THE IDEAL OF THE WHOLE To recapitulate and at the same time to enlarge somewhat the points thus far covered in Book II: Kant proclaims man an end _per se_. This promises a philosophic basis for an ethical world-view. The promise is not kept. Kant takes as his point of departure absolute obligation, and attempts to deduce out of an empty formula a worthwhile object. Kant’s formula is: Treat man never merely as a means, but also as an end _per se_. But how far man may be treated as a means, and what the relation of the means to the end may be is left undetermined. An upper crust of morality is formed, as it were, upon the empirical flood of passions, desires, etc. A straight line is drawn beyond which the under world in every man may not emerge. But a truly instrumental view of the means as related to the end is not established. This is one of the great gaps in Kant’s system. Note the almost puerile reason given for culture: we should cultivate our talents _weil sie zu allerhand Zwecken nützlich sein mögen_.