The procedure thus indicated seems simple. As long as an individual considers the purpose or motive of his action as if it were merely a matter of that one deed; as if it were an isolated thing, there is no rationality, no consciousness of moral law or principle. But let the individual imagine himself gifted with such power that, if he acts, the motive of his act will become a fixed, a regular law in the constitution of things. Would he, as a rational being, be willing to bring about such a universalization,--can he, with equanimity as a reasonable being, contemplate such an outcome? If he can, the act is right; if not (as in the case of making a lying promise), wrong. No sensible person would question the instructiveness of this scheme in the concrete. It indicates that the value of reason--of abstraction and generalization--in conduct is to help us escape from the partiality that flows from desire and emotion in their first and superficial manifestations, and to attain a more unified and permanent end. As a method (though not the only one) of realizing the _full meaning_ of a proposed course of action, nothing could be better than asking ourselves how we should like to be committed forever to its principle; how we should like to have others committed to it and to treat us according to it? Such a method is well calculated to make us face our proposed end in its impartial consequences; to teach the danger of cherishing merely those results which are most congenial to our passing whim and our narrow conception of personal profit. In short, by generalizing a purpose we make its _general_ character evident. But this method does not proceed (as Kant would have it) from a mere consideration of moral law _apart from a concrete end, but from an end in so far as it persistently approves itself to reflection after an adequate survey of it in all its bearings_. It is the possibility of _generalizing the concrete end_ that Kant falls back upon. Other illustrations which Kant offers enforce the same lesson. He suggests the following: (1) A man in despair from misfortune considers suicide. "Now he inquires whether the maxim of his action could become a universal law of nature." We see at once that a system of nature by which it should be a law to destroy life by means of the very feeling--self-love--whose nature it is to impel to the maintenance of life, would contradict itself and therefore could not exist. (2) A man who has a certain talent is tempted from sluggishness and love of amusement not to cultivate it. But if he applies the principle he sees that, while a system of nature might subsist if his motive became a law (so that all people devoted their lives to idleness and amusement), yet he cannot _will_ that such a system should receive absolute realization. As a rational being he necessarily also wills that faculties be developed since they serve for all sorts of possible purposes.