and also desires to procure for all and each the greatest sum of well-being. But in ethics, where the object of investigation is _action_ as _action_, and in its direct significance for the _actor_—not its consequences, suffering, or its relation to others—in this reference, I say, it is altogether inadmissible, because at bottom it really amounts to a principle of happiness, thus to egoism. We cannot, therefore, share Kant’s satisfaction that his principle of ethics is not a material one, _i.e._, one which sets up an object as a motive, but merely formal, whereby it corresponds symmetrically to the formal laws with which the “Critique of Pure Reason” has made us familiar. Certainly it is, instead of a law, merely a formula for finding such a law. But, in the first place, we had this formula already more briefly and clearly in the “_Quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris_;” and, secondly, the analysis of this formula shows that it is simply and solely the reference to one’s own happiness that gives it content, and therefore it can only be serviceable to a rational egoism, to which also every legal constitution owes its origin. Another mistake which, because it offends the feelings of every one, has often been condemned, and was satirised by Schiller in an epigram, is the pedantic rule that for an act to be really good and meritorious it must be done simply and solely out of respect for the known law and the conception of duty, and in accordance with a maxim known to the reason _in abstracto_, and not from any inclination, not from benevolence felt towards others, not from tender-hearted compassion, sympathy, or emotion of the heart, which (according to the “Critique of Practical Reason,” p. 213; Rosenkranz’s edition, p. 257) to right-thinking persons are indeed very burdensome, as confusing their deliberate maxims. The act must be performed unwillingly and with self-compulsion. Remember that nevertheless the hope of reward is not allowed to enter, and estimate the great absurdity of the demand. But, what is saying more, this is directly opposed to the true spirit of virtue; not the act, but the willingness to do it, the love from which it proceeds, and without which it is a dead work, constitutes its merit. Therefore Christianity rightly teaches that all outward works are worthless if they do not proceed from that genuine disposition which consists in true goodwill and pure love, and that what makes blessed and saves is not the works done (_opera operata_), but the faith, the genuine disposition, which is the gift of the Holy Ghost alone, and which the free, deliberative will, having only the law in view, does not produce. This demand of Kant’s, that all virtuous conduct shall proceed from pure, deliberate respect for the law and in accordance with its abstract maxims, coldly and without inclination, nay, opposed to all inclination, is just the same thing as if he asserted that every work of