All this is true, and yet one would form a poor opinion of Kant’s thoroughness if one represented him as having rushed from one or two examples to the generalization: All hypothetical uses of the _ought_ are scientific and non-moral; all categorical uses are moral and non-scientific. To such a generalization Kant does indeed come, and to it he clings through difficulties more than enough to discourage one in whom the conviction of its truth were less a matter of heart than it was to Kant. But however it fitted in with Kant’s character to view the command of duty as sternly categorical, it was equally part of his character patiently to seek a reason for the faith that was in him. If Kant had wished to establish no more than that there must be _something_ categorical about the moral _ought_ distinguishing it from the many _oughts_ that suggest nothing of morality, his task would not have been hard. For suppose that to every command there was really a hidden condition attached; suppose that the categorical was really a hypothetical imperative in disguise. Then the goodness of the act commanded could mean no more than its fitness to bring about a certain result. But what of the result? Is it, too, good? The question can obviously have no meaning, for only the way can be good; the goal cannot. And yet we seem to revolt against such meaning of goodness: there is a difference to us between a good way of cheating one’s neighbor and a way of being good. Either then there is some way of defining a good end--an end which justifies the means--or else there must be a moral excellence that belongs to certain types of act irrespective of what they may lead to, if indeed they lead to aught in common. In either case we come upon the categorical _ought_--the end that ought to be pursued for its own sake, or else the type of act that ought to be followed for its own sake with no view to consequences. The first interpretation of the moral ought would be illustrated in a theory that pointed, as did Hume’s, to the happiness of the community as an end imposed without condition, while it defined good actions to be such as were well calculated to bring about this end. The second interpretation is in the spirit of the Decalogue, or of the classic saying, Let justice be done though the heavens fall. It is not the business of the actor to consider the consequences of his just dealing; if the world is so divinely ordered that not the heavens but heaven’s blessing fall on the just man, this is a truth to be independently established. Duty first, consequences after!