SO far as the general tendency of his thought goes Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) lives entirely in the optimistic-ethical world-view of rationalism._(_39_)_ He has, however, a feeling that its foundations are not deep and firm enough, and he regards it as his task to put them on ground which is in every respect more secure. For this purpose a deeper ethic, and a less naïve positiveness in assertions about world-view which touch upon the supra-sensible, seem to him desirable. Like the English intellectualists and intuitionists, Kant is offended by the idea that the ethic in which the modern age finds satisfaction and its impulse to activity is rooted merely in considerations of the universal advantage of morally good actions. Like them, he feels that it is something more than this, and that in the ultimate analysis it has its origin in the compulsion which men experience to strive for self-perfecting. But while his predecessors stick fast in the matter provided by semi-scholastic philosophy and theology, he attacks the problem along the lines of pure ethical thought. It follows for him that the fundamental origin and the exalted character of the moral can be preserved only if we always consciously make it an end in itself, and never merely a means to an end. Even if moral conduct prove itself to be always advantageous and practical, our motive to it must nevertheless always be a [pg 107] purely inward compulsion. The utilitarian ethic must abdicate before that of immediate and sovereign duty. That is the meaning of the doctrine of the categorical imperative. The English anti-utilitarians had in common with the utilitarians the thought that the moral law was related in its essence to empirical natural law. Kant, however, asserts that it has nothing to do with the order of nature, and has its origin in supra-natural impulses. He is the first since Plato to feel, like him, that the ethical is the mysterious fact within us. In powerful language he proves in the _Critique of the Practical Reason_ that ethics are a volition which raises us above ourselves, makes us free from the natural order of the world, and attaches us to a higher world-order. That is his great discovery. In the development of it, however, he is not happy. Whoever asserts the absoluteness of moral duty, must also give the moral an absolute and completely universal content. He must specify a principle of conduct which shows itself as absolutely binding, and as lying at the foundations of the most varied ethical duties. If he does not succeed in doing this, his work is only a fragment.