In Kantian phraseology, man under one visible form is the union of an intelligence and a sensibility, of a noümenal with a phenomenal being. He is, indeed, says Kant, the former only in idea: it is only a standpoint which he assumes. But it is a standpoint he always does assume, if he is to be practical, i. e. if he is to move and modify the world he finds around him. And what standpoint is that? What is the law that has to govern his action, the law of the spiritual world? Its supreme law is the law of liberty; and that law is autonomy. Action--always under law--but that law a self-imposed one. So act that thy will may be thy law, and with thy will the law of all others whatsoever; so act that no other human being may by thy act be deprived of full freedom and treated merely as a thing: so act as to respect the dignity of every human being as implicitly a sovereign legislative. In other words, Morality is a stage of struggle and of progress which bears witness to something beyond. The 'I ought' represents a transition stage towards the 'I will,' or rather it is the translation of it into the language of the phenomenal world.[3] Morality, in a sense-being, always presents itself as a contest between the good and the evil principle: but in the transcendent and noümenal being which such a being essentially is,--in the reasonable or good will, the victory is already won by the good. Good is the law which governs the world, and which is the strength of the individual life. To the sensuous imagination, indeed, which here is apt to usurp the place of reason, things appear under a somewhat different aspect. There the certainty of self-conquest is forced by the difficulties of apparent failure to veil itself under the picture of a perpetual approximation through endless ages towards the standard of perfect goodness: the confidence that the world is reasonable is presented under the conception of a God who makes all things work together for good to the righteous: and the autonomy of reason presents itself as the postulate of freedom to begin afresh, absolutely untrammeled by all that has gone before. Thus the kingdom of reason is represented as having its times and seasons; as making determinate starts, and working up to a consummation in the end of ages. But implicitly Kant's idea of reason's autonomy,--of the 'I ought' as in its supreme truth an 'I will,'--is an eternal truth. The 'standpoint,' so to call it after Kant, is the standpoint which explains life and conduct and which makes conduct possible. It is the assertion that the completeness _is,_ and is my inmost being, the source of my action, my chief good, and that chief good not a gratification or satisfaction to be looked forward to as reward, but essential life and self-realisation. And this joy is what is hidden under the austere gravity of the categorical imperative.