Morals are really at one, however much they may clothe it in different costumes, I shall at once express in the form which I take to be the simplest and purest possible, _viz.: Neminem laede, immo omnes, quantum potes, juva_. (Do harm to no one; but rather help all people, as far as lies in your power.) This is in truth the proposition which all ethical writers expend their energies in endeavouring to account for. It is the common result of their manifold and widely differing deductions; it is the _ὅ,τι_ for which the _διότι_ is still sought after; the consequence, the cause of which is wanting. Hence it is itself nothing but the _Datum_ (the thing given), in relation to which the _Quaesitum_ (the thing required) is the problem of every ethical system, as also of the present prize essay. The solution of this riddle will disclose the real foundation of Ethics, which, like the philosopher's stone, has been searched for from time immemorial. That the _Datum_, the _ὅ,τι_, the principle is most purely expressed by the enunciation I have given, can be seen from the fact that it stands to every other precept of Morals as a conclusion to given premises, and therefore constitutes the real goal it is desired to attain; so that all other ethical commandments can only be regarded as paraphrases, as indirect or disguised statements, of the above simple proposition. This is true, for instance, even of that trite and apparently elementary maxim: _Quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris_[8] (Do not to another what you are unwilling should be done to yourself.) The defect here is that the wording only touches the duties imposed by law, not those required by virtue;--a thing which can be easily remedied by the omission of _non_ and _ne_. Thus changed, it really means nothing else than: _Neminem laede, immo omnes, quantum potes, juva._ But as this sense is only reached by a periphrasis, the formula gains the appearance of having also revealed its own ultimate foundation, its _διότι_; which, however, is not the case, because it does not in the least follow that, if I am unwilling that something be done to myself, I ought not to do it to others. The same is true of every other principle or leading proposition of Ethics that has hitherto been put forward.