=2. Private and General Good.=--Since the wide and permanent good is social, it is urged that unless we have an independent faculty of moral knowledge, our judgment will be subservient to the ends of private desire, and hence will not place itself at the public point of view. Or, if it does so, it will be simply as a matter of expediency to calculate better the means for getting our own pleasure. In general, it is urged that only a faculty of knowledge completely independent of personal wishes, habits, purposes can secure judgments possessing inherent dignity and authoritativeness; since these require an elevated, impartial, universal, and necessary point of view. We shall in the sequel attempt to show that this view of knowledge results from the false conception of desire as having pleasure for its object, and from a false conception of the relation of intent and motive. When these errors are corrected, there is no ground to assume any special faculty of moral intelligence, save as the one capacity of thought is specialized into a particular mental habit by being constantly occupied in judging values. We shall try to show that the broad and public point of view is secured by fusion of impulses with sympathetic affections. We shall begin with stating and criticizing the views of Kant, who upholds the doctrine of a separate independent Moral Reason in its most extreme form. § 2. KANT'S THEORY OF PRACTICAL REASON Kant is at one with the hedonist as regards the natural object of desire; it is pleasure. All purposes and ends that spring from inclination and natural tendency come under one head: self-love. Hence, the ordinary use of intelligence is confined to the matter of passing upon what constitutes the individual's private happiness and how he shall secure it. There are then fundamental contrasts between ordinary practical activity and genuinely moral activity, contrasts which reflect themselves in the theory of the nature and function of moral knowledge. (1) The moral end is _unqualified_, absolute, categorical. It is not something which we can pick or leave at our option. Morality is the region of final ends, ends not to be disputed or questioned; and reason must set forth such final ends. Since, however, happiness is not a morally necessary end, intelligence in its behalf can only give hypothetical counsel and advice: _if_ you would be happy, or happy in this, or that way, then take such and such measures. Reason which promulgates ends must be of a different sort from the intelligence which simply searches for means.