3. Kant’s version of the ethical rule is strong on the side of interdiction, but quite inadequate on the positive side. He tells us that we are to look on others not merely as means to our own ends, but also ends _per se_. The vagueness is in the formula “not merely ... but also.” Where the dividing line is to be drawn he does not tell. I am at liberty to use the services of others in the prosecution of my own interests, as they may use mine, since we are social beings and dependent on one another. But how far may I go in this direction? On this point we are left wholly in the dark. Kant admits into his system the so-called natural ends,[40] such as wealth, culture and the like, gives them leave to abound, only with the proviso that they may not overpass a certain limit,—the limit beyond which they would interfere with the rights of fellowmen. An instrumental view of wealth, science, culture, as positively promoting the ethical end of man, he does not and cannot establish.[41] But the instrumental view is precisely that in which modern society has most at stake, on the working out of which the solution of our most pressing problems,—such as the labor problem, the problem of the family, the problem of patriotism and international relations—is entirely dependent. If Kant has failed at this point, as I believe he has, his usefulness as a guide in the reconstruction of modern life is seriously diminished. What he had set out to demonstrate, the inalienable worth of man, remains; but foundations other than his must be found. For the formula “not merely as a means but also as an end” I would substitute: Treat every man as a spiritual means to thine own spiritual end and conversely ... treat the extent and the manner in which we are to use one another as means being determined by the criterion that our exchange of services shall conduce to the attainment of each other’s ends as ethical beings conjointly. NOTE III I would also ask the reader to consider well the effect upon the philosophy of life of the position taken throughout this volume that there is no intellectual bridge between the finite order and the infinite order. This involves dropping creation at the beginning and immortality in its usual sense at the end. Creation is an attempt to show how the world, including man, proceeded out of the infinite. Immortality is an attempt to express how man returns to the infinite. In this volume man’s dealings with the finite order are represented as having for their purpose the achievement of the conviction that there verily is an infinite life, a supersensible universe. Creation systems, pantheistic systems, certain evolutionary systems, also the Hegelian system, are futile attempts to explain the How. But explanation is impossible; for to explain means to understand, and to understand means to trace an effect to its cause. And causality is not the kind of synthesis applicable to a co-existent totality.