The gospel of duty has an invigorating ring. It is easy to present it as the most noble and sublime of all moral doctrines. What is more worthy of humanity, what better marks the separation of man from brute, than the will to subordinate selfish desire and individual inclination to the commands of stern and lofty duty? And if the idea of command (which inevitably goes with the notion of duty) carries a sinister suggestion of legal authority, pains and penalties and of subservience to an external authority who issues the commands, Kant seems to have provided a final corrective in insisting that duty is self-imposed. Moral commands are imposed by the higher, supranatural self upon the lower empirical self, by the rational self upon the self of passions and inclinations. German philosophy is attached to antitheses and their reconciliation in a higher synthesis. The Kantian principle of Duty is a striking case of the reconciliation of the seemingly conflicting ideas of freedom and authority. Unfortunately, however, the balance cannot be maintained in practice. Kant's faithful logic compels him to insist that the concept of duty is empty and formal. It tells men that to do their duty is their supreme law of action, but is silent as to what men's duties specifically are. Kant, moreover, insists, as he is in logic bound to do, that the motive which measures duty is wholly inner; it is purely a matter of inner consciousness. To admit that consequences can be taken into account in deciding what duty is in a particular case would be to make concessions to the empirical and sensible world which are fatal to the scheme. The combination of these two features of pure internality and pure formalism leads, in a world where men's _acts_ take place wholly in the external and empirical region, to serious consequences. The dangerous character of these consequences may perhaps be best gathered indirectly by means of a quotation. "While the French people in savage revolt against spiritual and secular despotism had broken their chains and proclaimed their _rights_, another quite different revolution was working in Prussia--the revolution of _duty_. The assertion of the rights of the individual leads ultimately to individual irresponsibility and to a repudiation of the State. Immanuel Kant, the founder of the critical philosophy, taught, in opposition to this view, the gospel of moral duty, and Scharnhorst grasped the idea of universal military service. By calling upon which individual to sacrifice property and life for the good of the community, he gave the clearest expression to the idea of the State, and created a sound basis on which the claims to individual rights might rest."[52:A] [52:A] Bernhardi, "Germany and the Next War," pp. 63-64.