The great weakness of the Kantian doctrine of Morality lies in the fact that it retains Free Will, even though it gives it another name. It is called autonomy of Will and is contrasted with heteronomy. This doctrine demands, and considers it possible, that the Will should be its own lawgiver and should not allow others to lay down laws for it; but it fails to examine how the Will comes to make laws for itself, of what hypothesis these laws are the necessary conclusions, by what means the Will secures respect for its law, and whether this seemingly self-imposed law is not really the inner realization of a ready-made law of extraneous origin. The dogma of the autonomy of the Will is a consequence of the preliminary error of excluding utility from Morality and of declaring its imperative to be categorical, that is, not dependent on the aim, but independent and regardless of any aim. The whole tomfoolery of the categorical imperative and of the autonomy of the Will is transcendental mysticism, and is all the more surprising as it is the result of an investigation which claims to be the work of pure Reason. It is the shadow of the ghostly bogies of religious conceptions in the daylight of "pure Reason." From the point of view of the community we may speak of merit and sin, but not from the subjective point of view. For the community the moral conduct of the individual is useful, immoral conduct is disadvantageous, therefore it praises the one and condemns and punishes the other. That is opportunism, but not moral philosophy. Considered subjectively, moral conduct is just as little meritorious as beauty, great stature, muscular strength, keen intelligence, health, a good memory, prompt reactions of consciousness and all other advantages that the individual has received without his personal intervention as a gift of nature. And immoral conduct is just as little blameworthy as ugliness, stupidity, sickness and other misfortunes which the individual is burdened with by heredity or which a hard fate has imposed on him. Happy is the favoured man! Pitiable the unfortunate one! Both are the work of forces which are absolutely beyond the control of their wills. In the same way the good man acts morally because he possesses insight and restraining will-power, and the bad man acts immorally because these perfections have been denied him, and neither the one nor the other can do anything in the matter. That does not relieve man of the duty of labouring assiduously at his moral development, but it does relieve him of responsibility for the result of his efforts. On one point the sociological, the biological and the theological moralists agree: they all bow down humbly before Grace. CHAPTER VII MORALITY AND PROGRESS I have fully investigated in another book ("_Der Sinn der Geschichte_") the problem of progress in all its details. I therefore refer the reader to that for all particulars, and will here give only a summary of the main points.