On account of Kant’s love of architectonic symmetry, the theoretical reason had also to have a _pendant_. The _intellectus practicus_ of the Scholastics, which again springs from the νους πρακτικος of Aristotle (_De Anima_, iii. 10, and _Polit._, vii. c. 14: ὁ μεν γαρ πρακτικος εστι λογος, ὁ δε θεωρητικος), provides the word ready made. Yet here something quite different is denoted by it—not as there, the reason directed to technical skill. Here the practical reason appears as the source and origin of the undeniable ethical significance of human action, and of all virtue, all nobleness, and every attainable degree of holiness. All this accordingly should come from mere _reason_, and demand nothing but this. To act rationally and to act virtuously, nobly, holily, would be one and the same; and to act selfishly, wickedly, viciously, would be merely to act irrationally. However, all times and peoples and languages have distinguished the two, and held them to be quite different things; and so does every one even at the present day who knows nothing of the language of the new school, _i.e._, the whole world, with the exception of a small company of German _savants_. Every one but these last understands by virtuous conduct and a rational course of life two entirely different things. To say that the sublime founder of the Christian religion, whose life is presented to us as the pattern of all virtue, was _the most rational_ of all men would be called a very unbecoming and even a blasphemous way of speaking; and almost as much so if it were said that His precepts contained all the best directions for a perfectly _rational life_. Further, that he who, in accordance with these precepts, instead of taking thought for his own future needs, always relieves the greater present wants of others, without further motive, nay, gives all his goods to the poor, in order then, destitute of all means of subsistence, to go and preach to others also the virtue which he practises himself; this every one rightly honours; but who ventures to extol it as the highest pitch of _reasonableness_? And finally, who praises it as a _rational_ deed that Arnold von Winkelried, with surpassing courage, clasped the hostile spears against his own body in order to gain victory and deliverance for his countrymen? On the other hand, if we see a man who from his youth upwards deliberates with exceptional foresight how he may procure for himself an easy competence, the means for the support of wife and children, a good name among men, outward honour and distinction, and in doing so never allows himself to be led astray or induced to lose sight of his end by the charm of present pleasures or the satisfaction of defying the arrogance of the powerful, or the desire of revenging insults and undeserved humiliations he has suffered, or the attractions of useless aesthetic or philosophical occupations of the mind, or travels in interesting lands, but with great consistency works towards his one