Kant’s conception of freedom or autonomy of the will is the key to his moral theory. "On the hypothesis of freedom of the will," he says, "morality together with its principle follows from it by mere analysis of the conception." We saw in the last chapter that Kant regarded human action, when looked at from an anthropological point of view, as phenomenal, and therefore subject to the law of cause and effect. If we think of man as a creature of inclination, with likes and dislikes, we seem, in considering men’s differences from one another in this respect, to be dealing with matters of fact over which men have no control. We are born and grow up with different natures, with the result that one man likes one thing, another another; one man’s temptations do not tempt another, what one man finds easy another finds difficult. We seem here to be in a world where causation rules. If men act differently, it is because their external environment, acting upon their different natures, calls out different responses. So far, then, says Kant, as men act according to inclination, do things because they like doing them, or avoid them because they dislike them, their actions are what he calls heteronomous, governed by laws over which they have no control. We assume, whenever we are trying to explain human actions, that they are the result of the interaction of character and environment, and are not to be praised or blamed but understood. _Tout comprendre est tout pardonner_. But when we consider our moral judgments we seem to be in a different world, for there are some actions which we think we or others ought to have done or ought not to have done, and this obligation has nothing to do with our likes and dislikes. If we look back upon a past action of our own, we may see why we did it, understand how the temptation to it appealed with peculiar strength to something in our nature, yet nevertheless we may say that we ought not to have done it, and with that judgment goes the conviction that we need not have done it. The conception of "what ought to be" is on a different plane from the conception of "what is," and assumes a different kind of causality. It assumes that, when we are done with our analysis of character, of a man’s likes and dislikes and the effect of circumstances upon them, we can still assume that it is in his power to do what he ought and to abstain from doing what he ought not. We praise the first and blame the second, whether in ourselves or others, just because we assume, over and above inclination and disinclination, a possibility of acting or not acting as duty demands.