Thus we see illustrated the guidance of conduct in conformity with the Kantian maxim; and what is the process of guidance? It is that of considering what, in the particular case, would be the result if the suggested course of conduct were made universal; and then being deterred from willing such conduct by the badness of the conceived result. Now, in the first place, what here becomes of the doctrine of a good will, which we are told exists “without paying {215} any regard to the effect expected from it”? (p. 24). The good will, characterized by readiness to see the act it prompts made universal, has, in this particular case, as in every other case, to be decided by contemplation of an end—if not a special and immediate end then a general and remote end. And what, in this case, is to be the deterrent from a suggested course of conduct? Consciousness that the result, if such conduct were universal, might be suffering to self: there might be no aid when it was wanted. So that, in the first place, the question is to be decided by the contemplation of happiness or misery as likely to be caused by the one or the other course; and, in the second place, this happiness or misery is that of the individual himself. Strangely enough, this principle which is lauded because of its apparently implied altruism, turns out, in the last resort, to have its justification in egoism! The essential truth here to be noted, however, is that the Kantian principle, so much vaunted as higher than that of expediency or utilitarianism, is compelled to take expediency or utilitarianism as its basis. Do what it will, it cannot escape the need for conceiving happiness or misery, to self or others or both, as respectively to be achieved or avoided; for in any case what, except the conceived happiness or misery which would follow if a given mode of action were made universal, can determine the will for or against such mode of action? If, in one who has been injured, there arises a temptation to murder the injurer; and if, following out the Kantian injunction, the tempted man thinks of himself as willing that all men who have been injured should murder those who have injured them; and if, imagining the consequences experienced by mankind at large, and possibly on some occasion by himself in particular, he is deterred from yielding to the temptation; what is it which deters him? Obviously the representation of the many evils, pains, deprivations of happiness, which would be caused. If, on imagining his act to be {216} universalized, he saw that it would increase human happiness, the alleged deterrent would not act. Hence the conduct to be insured by adoption of the Kantian maxim is simply the conduct to be insured by making the happiness of self or others or both the end to be achieved. By implication, if not avowedly, the Kantian principle is as distinctly utilitarian as the principle of Bentham. And it falls short of a scientific ethics in just the