This is precisely what happens in the last form of utilitarianism, which has seemed to be capricious and extravagant, but is on the contrary profoundly auto-critical, since it reveals the ultimate essence and defect of the doctrine: what is known as _theological utilitarianism._ Human actions are always inspired by what is merely useful to the individual, and if a number of these seems to diverge from this criterion, this happens because account is not taken of an actual fact, by means of which even the actions which seem to be divergent are reduced to the common measure. This given fact is the life beyond this world, in which God rewards or punishes him who has obeyed or disobeyed his will, in the life of this world. He who in this life seems to resist the impulse of his personal advantage and performs sacrifices of every sort, even to that of his own life, follows equally with the others his personal advantage; and believing in God, in the immortality of the soul, and in the reward and the punishment that await him, he regulates his action according to these actual facts. _Intuitionistic_ Ethic, which places a moral duty at the side of individual pleasure, but indeducible from it, is in reality deduced from individual pleasure, and is likewise turned into _rational_ or utilitarian Ethic by means of the transcendental datum. In this way the solution makes shipwreck in mystery; since God, immortality, the other life, the divine command, punishments and rewards, cannot be defined and justified by means of thought and concept. When utilitarianism becomes theological, it abandons the philosophical field, confessing by so doing its philosophical defeat. And to philosophical consideration the distinction between the individually useful and that which is also superindividual shines out ever more clearly after the many vain attacks of utilitarianism, the affirmation of the moral form, as united and distinct from the utilitarian; the _autonomy_ of Ethic against every form of _utilitarianism_ and every _heteronomous Ethic._ III CRITIQUE OF THE NEGATIONS OF THE ECONOMIC FORM [Sidenote: _The thesis of moral abstracticism against the concept of the useful._] If in the course of philosophical history, the theory of utility has sought to cause the disappearance of the other practical term, which is morality, by swallowing it up, we are not to believe that morality has been for its part more modest and discreet and has not in its turn attempted to devour its companion. One exaggeration has been met with another; to utilitarianism has been opposed that error which may be called _moral abstracticism,_ by means of which is refused to the concept of utility the place that belongs to it in the organism of the spirit.