sufficient certainty, by a single appeal to the judgement of common
sense, for this reason, that anything empirical which might slip
into our maxims as a determining principle of the will can be detected
at once by the feeling of pleasure or pain which necessarily
attaches to it as exciting desire; whereas pure practical reason
positively refuses to admit this feeling into its principle as a
condition. The heterogeneity of the determining principles (the
empirical and rational) is clearly detected by this resistance of a
practically legislating reason against every admixture of inclination,
and by a peculiar kind of sentiment, which, however, does not
precede the legislation of the practical reason, but, on the contrary,
is produced by this as a constraint, namely, by the feeling of a
respect such as no man has for inclinations of whatever kind but for
the law only; and it is detected in so marked and prominent a manner
that even the most uninstructed cannot fail to see at once in an
example presented to him, that empirical principles of volition may
indeed urge him to follow their attractions, but that he can never
be expected to obey anything but the pure practical law of reason
alone.
The distinction between the doctrine of happiness and the doctrine
of morality, in the former of which empirical principles constitute
the entire foundation, while in the second they do not form the
smallest part of it, is the first and most important office of the
Analytic of pure practical reason; and it must proceed in it with as
much exactness and, so to speak, scrupulousness, as any geometer in
his work. The philosopher, however, has greater difficulties to
contend with here (as always in rational cognition by means of
concepts merely without construction), because he cannot take any
intuition as a foundation (for a pure noumenon). He has, however, this
advantage that, like the chemist, he can at any time make an
experiment with every man's practical reason for the purpose of
distinguishing the moral (pure) principle of determination from the
empirical; namely, by adding the moral law (as a determining
principle) to the empirically affected will (e.g., that of the man who
would be ready to lie because he can gain something thereby). It is as
if the analyst added alkali to a solution of lime in hydrochloric
acid, the acid at once forsakes the lime, combines with the alkali,
and the lime is precipitated. Just in the same way, if to a man who is
otherwise honest (or who for this occasion places himself only in
thought in the position of an honest man), we present the moral law by
which he recognises the worthlessness of the liar, his practical
reason (in forming a judgement of what ought to be done) at once
forsakes the advantage, combines with that which maintains in him
respect for his own person (truthfulness), and the advantage after
it has been separated and washed from every particle of reason