=Kant's Introduction of Social Factors.=--The further development which Kant gives the formula already quoted (p. 312) goes far to remove the appearance of opposition between the utilitarian social standard and his own abstract rationalism. Kant points out that according to his view the moral or rational will is its own end. Hence every rational person is always an end, never a means:--this, indeed, is what we mean by a person. But every normal human being is a rational person. Consequently another formula for his maxim is: "So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, as an end, never as a means merely." The man who contemplates suicide "uses a person merely as a means to maintaining a tolerable condition of life." He who would make a lying promise to another makes that other one merely a means to his profit, etc. Moreover, since all persons are equally ends in themselves and are to be equally regarded in behavior, we may say the standard of right is the notion of a "Kingdom of Ends"--the idea of "the union of different rational beings in a system by common laws."[161] These propositions are rather formal, but the moment we put definite meaning into them, they suggest that the good for any man is that in which the welfare of others counts as much as his own. The right is that action which, so far as in it lies, combines into a whole of common interests and purposes the otherwise conflicting aims and interests of different persons. So interpreted, the Kantian formula differs in words, rather than in idea, from Bentham's happiness of all concerned "each counting for one and only one"; from Mill's statement that the "deeply rooted conception which every individual even now has of himself as a social being tends to make him feel it as one of his natural wants, that there should be harmony between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow creatures." In all of these formulæ we find re-statements of our conception that the good is the activities in which all men participate so that the powers of each are called out, put to use, and reënforced. =Consequent Transformation of Theory of Reason.=--Now if the common good, in the form of a society of individuals, as a kingdom of ends, is the object with reference to which the ends of desire have to be rationalized, Kant's theory of an _a priori_ and empty Reason is completely made over. In strict logic Kant contradicts himself when he says that we are to generalize the end of desire, so as to see whether it could become a universal law. For according to him no end of desire (since it is private and a form of self-love) _can possibly be generalized_. He is setting up as a method of enlightenment precisely the very impossibility (impossible, that is, on his own theory that private happiness is the end of desire) which made him first resort to his _a priori_ and transcendental reason. No more complete contradiction can be imagined.