It is precisely through the influence of Kant's philosophy; through the
contemporaneous effect of the unparalleled progress made in all the
natural sciences, with regard to which every past age in comparison
with our own appears childish; and lastly, through the knowledge of
Sanskrit literature, and of those most ancient and widest spread
faiths, Brahmanism and Buddhism, which, as far as time and space go,
are the most important religions systems of mankind, and, as a matter
of fact, are the original native religions of our own race, now well
known to be of Asiatic descent--our race, to which in its new strange
home they once more send a message across the centuries;--it is because
of all this, I say, that the fundamental philosophical convictions of
learned Europe have in the course of the last fifty years undergone a
revolution, which perhaps many only reluctantly admit, but which cannot
be denied. The result of this change is that the old supports of Ethics
have been shown to be rotten, while the assurance remains that Ethics
itself can never collapse; whence the conviction arises that for it
there must exist a groundwork different from any hitherto provided,
and adaptable to the advanced views of the age. The need of such is
making itself felt more and more, and in it we undoubtedly find the
reason that has induced the Royal Society to make the present important
question the subject of a prize essay.
In every age much good morality has been preached; but the explanation
of its _raison d'être_ has always been encompassed with difficulties.
On the whole we discern an endeavour to get at some objective truth,
from which the ethical injunctions could-be logically deduced; and
it has been sought for both in the nature of things, and in the
nature of man; but in vain. The result was always the same. The will
of each human unit was found to gravitate solely towards its own
individual welfare, the idea of which in its entirety is designated
by the term "blissfulness" (_Glückseligkeit_); and this striving
after self-satisfaction leads mankind by a path very, different to
the one morality would fain point out. The endeavour was next made
now to identify "blissfulness" with virtue, now to represent it as
virtue's consequence and effect. Both attempts have always failed; and
this for no want of sophistry. Then recourse was had to artificial
formulas, purely objective and abstract, as well _a posteriori_ as
_a priori_, from which correct ethical conduct undoubtedly admitted
of being deduced. But there was nothing found in man's nature to
afford these a footing, whereby they might have availed to guide the
strivings of his volition, in face of its egoistic tendency. It appears
to me superfluous to verify all this by describing and criticising
every hitherto existing foundation of morality; not only because I
share Augustine's opinion, _non est pro magno habendum quid homines
senserint, sed quae sit rei veritas_ (It is the truth about a thing,