alike and under all circumstances; the appeal is to our reason, not to our sensibility.  If happiness were the end of rational beings, then nature had endowed us but poorly for it, since instead of an unfailing instinct she has given us the weak and deceitful reason as a guide, which, with its train, culture, science, art, and luxury, has brought more trouble than satisfaction to mankind.  Man has a destiny other than well-being, and a higher one—­the formation of good dispositions:  here we have the only thing in the whole world that can never be used for evil, the only thing that does not borrow its value from a higher end, but itself originally and inalienably contains it, and that gives value to all else that merits esteem.  “Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good without qualification, except a good will.”  Understanding, courage, moderation, and whatever other mental gifts or praiseworthy qualities of temperament may be cited, as also the gifts of fortune, “are undoubtedly good and desirable in many respects, but they may also become extremely evil and mischievous, if the will which is to make use of them is not good.”  These are the classic words with which Kant commences the Foundation of the Metaphysics of Ethics.

When does the will deserve the predicate “good”?  Let us listen to the popular moral consciousness, which distinguishes three grades of moral recognition.  He who refrains from that which is contrary to duty, no matter from what motives—­as, for example, the shopkeeper who does not cheat because he knows that honesty is the best policy—­receives moderate praise for irreproachable outward behavior.  We bestow warmer praise and encouragement on him whom ambition impels to industry, kind feeling to beneficence, and pity to render assistance.  But he alone earns our esteem who does his duty for duty’s sake.  Only in this third case, where not merely the external action, nor merely the impulse of a happy disposition, but the will itself, the maxim, is in harmony with the moral law, where the good is done for the sake of the good, do we find true morality, that unconditioned, self-grounded worth.  The man who does that which is in accordance with duty out of reflection on its advantages, and he who does it from immediate—­always unreliable—­inclination, acts legally; he alone acts morally who, without listening to advantage and inclination, takes up the law into his disposition, and does his duty because it is duty.  The sole moral motive is the consciousness of duty, respect for the moral lazy[1]

[Footnote 1:  The respect or reverence which the law, and, derivatively, the person in whom it is realized, compel from us, is, as self-produced through a concept of reason and as the only feeling which can be known a priori, specifically different from all feelings of inclination or fear awakened by sensuous influences.  As it strengthens and raises our rational nature, the consciousness of our freedom and of our high destination, but, at the same time, humbles our sensibility, there is mingled with the joy of exaltation a certain pain, which permits no intimate affection for the stern and sublime law.  It is not quite willingly that we pay our respect—­just because of the depressing effect which this feeling exerts on our self-love.]