In order to make practical philosophy consistent with itself, we must first decide the following question:—In dealing with the problems of practical reason must we begin from its material principle—the end as the object of free choice—or from its formal principle which is based merely on freedom in its external relation?—from which comes the following law:—“Act so that thou canst will that thy maxim should be a universal law, be the end of thy action what it will.”[150] [150] With regard to the meaning of the moral law and its significance in the Kantian system of ethics, see Abbott’s translation of the _Theory of Ethics_ (1889), pp. 38, 45, 54, 55, 119, 282. [Tr.] Without doubt, the latter determining principle of action must stand first; for, as a principle of right, it carries unconditional necessity with it, whereas the former is obligatory only if we assume the empirical conditions of the end set before us,—that is to say, that it is an end capable of being practically realised. And if this end—as, for example, the end of perpetual peace—should be also a duty, this same duty must necessarily have been deduced from the formal principle governing the maxims which guide external action. Now the first principle is the principle of the political moralist; the problems of constitutional, international and cosmopolitan law are mere technical problems (_problema technicum_). The second or formal principle, on the other hand, as the principle of the moral politician who regards it as a moral problem (_problema morale_), differs widely from the other principle in its methods of bringing about perpetual peace, which we desire not only as a material good, but also as a state of things resulting from our recognition of the precepts of duty.[151] [151] See Abbott’s trans., pp. 33, 34. [Tr.]