Logic and ethics are fundamentally the same, they are no more than duty to oneself. They celebrate their union by the highest service of truth, which is overshadowed in the one case by error, in the other by untruth. All ethics are possible only by the laws of logic, and logic is no more than the ethical side of law. Not only virtue, but also insight, not only sanctity but also wisdom, are the duties and tasks of mankind. Through the union of these alone comes perfection. Ethics, however, the laws of which are postulates, cannot be made the basis of a logical proof of existence. Ethics are not logical in the same sense that logic is ethical. Logic proves the absolute actual existence of the ego; ethics control the form which the actuality assumes. Ethics dominate logic and make logic part of their contents. In thinking of the famous passage in the “Critique of Practical Reason,” where Kant introduces man as a part of the intelligible cosmos, it may be asked how Kant assured himself that the moral law was inherent in personality. The answer Kant gave was simply that no other and no nobler origin could be found for it. He goes no further than to say that the categorical imperative is the law of the noumenon, belonging to it and inherent in it from the beginning. That, however, is the nature of ethics. Ethics make it possible for the intelligible ego to act free from the shackles of empiricism, and so through ethics, the existence of whose possibilities logic assures us, is able to become actual in all its purity. There remains a most important point in which the Kantian system is often misunderstood. It reveals itself plainly in every case of wrong-doing. Duty is only towards oneself; Kant must have realised this in his earlier days when first he felt an impulse to lie. Except for a few indications in Nietzsche, and in Stirner, and a few others, Ibsen alone seems to have grasped the principle of the Kantian ethics (notably in “Brand” and “Peer Gynt”). The following two quotations also give the Kantian view in a general way: First Hebbel’s epigram, “Lies and Truth.” “Which do you pay dearer for, lies or the truth? The former costs you yourself, the latter at most your happiness.” Next, the well-known words of Sleika from the “Westöstlichen Diwan”: All sorts go to make a world, The crowd and the rogue and the hero; But the highest fortune of earth’s children Is always in their own personality. It matters little how a man lives If only he is true to himself; It matters nothing what a man may lose If he remains what he really is.