Such in outline is Kant’s account of morality. A discussion of some of the difficulties which a consideration of it suggests may help to make its purport more clear. Kant holds that the principles of right action can be deduced directly from the imperative he has formulated, and need take therefore no account of historical circumstance. Now, it is easy to show that, when we do an action which we know to be wrong, we are making an exception in our own favour. We cannot universalise the maxim of our own conduct. When we do what we know to be wrong, we recognise what is right. We say, "This is how any one ought to act in these circumstances, but I am not going to do it." We must learn to look upon ourselves as we should look upon and judge any other moral agent. If, when taxed with wrongdoing, we reply, "I wanted to do it," or "That is the kind of person I am," or "That is the way I am made," we are abandoning the moral position, and the answer is, "Whether you wanted it or not, you ought not to have done it," or, "Well, you ought to become different." But this does not help us when, looking at actions from a moral standpoint, it is difficult to say what ought to be done. Kant tries to show that wrong action, if universalised, is always contradictory. He takes the instance of telling a lie. If that were universal no one would believe any one else, and there would be no point in telling a lie. Lying is essentially parasitical. But this does not help us in the familiar problem in casuistry, whether it is allowable to tell a lie to save life. For here we have a conflict between two maxims, both of which can be universalised. We cannot regard such a situation as simply involving a question of telling the truth or of saving life. We must consider the circumstances of the case. This is even more evident if we apply Kant’s rule to the question of whether celibacy is ever justified. If celibacy were universal, there would soon be nobody to be celibate, but it does not therefore follow that some people under certain circumstances ought not to be celibate. The question cannot be answered without reference to circumstances. The moral of this is that the categorical imperative does not enable us to act without individual moral judgment in individual cases. Further, in one of the instances which Kant gives he admits that there are certain ways of action which might be universalised, but which he nevertheless holds to be wrong. He instances the duty of being industrious. A society could quite well be imagined in which every one was lazy, but he says, "It cannot be willed." The ultimate appeal here is to what the moral reason wills. That means that we must admit that the moral reason or moral judgment has a content not derivable simply from the conception of the moral law; that there are certain kinds of life, certain kinds of action, which we judge to be good, and others which we judge to be bad.