In his earlier years Kant had accepted the current, Leibnizian view that human excellence consists in intellectual enlightenment, and that it is therefore reserved for an _élite_, privileged with the leisure and endowed with the special abilities required for its enjoyment. From this arid intellectualism he was delivered through the influence of Rousseau. “I am by disposition an enquirer. I feel the consuming thirst for knowledge, the eager unrest to advance ever further, and the delights of discovery. There was a time when I believed that this is what confers real dignity upon human life, and I despised the common people who know nothing. Rousseau has set me right. This imagined advantage vanishes. I learn to honour men, and should regard myself as of much less use than the common labourer, if I did not believe that my philosophy will restore to all men the common rights of humanity.”[57] These common rights Kant formulates in a purely individualist manner. For here also, in his lack of historic sense and in his distrust alike of priests and of statesmen, he is the child of his time. In the education and discipline of the soul he looks to nothing so artificial and humanly limited--Kant so regards them--as religious tradition and social institutions. Human rights, he believes, do not vary with time and place; and for their enjoyment man requires no initiation and no equipment beyond what is supplied by Nature herself. It is from this standpoint that Kant adduces, as the twofold and sufficient inspiration to the rigours and sublimities of the spiritual life, the starry heavens above us and the moral law within. They are ever-present influences on the life of man. The naked eye reveals the former; of the latter all men are immediately aware. In their universal appeal they are of the very substance of human existence. Philosophy may avail to counteract certain of the hindrances which prevent them from exercising their native influence; it cannot be a substitute for the inspiration which they alone can yield. Thus the categorical imperative, in endowing the human soul with an intrinsic value, singles it out from all other natural existences, and strengthens it to face, with equanimity, the cold immensities of the cosmic system. For though the heavens arouse in us a painful feeling of our insignificance as animal existences, they intensify our consciousness of a sublime destiny, as bearers of a rival, and indeed a superior, dignity. In one fundamental respect Kant broke with the teaching of Rousseau, namely, in questioning his doctrine of the natural goodness and indefinite perfectibility of human nature.[58] Nothing, Kant maintains, is good without qualification except the good will; and even that, perhaps, is never completely attained in any single instance. The exercise of duty demands a perpetual vigilance, under the ever-present consciousness of continuing demerit.