Now let it be remembered that Kant’s mission was, as above indicated, to exclude the speculative side of our nature from any direct relation to human destiny, inasmuch as it could not answer either of the three great questions which every man everywhere and of necessity puts,—­Whence am I?  What am I? and Whither do I tend?—­and therefore stood confused in the presence of any grand reality, whether human or divine, and to make the Practical Reason the sole and immediate link of connection between ourselves and the realities from the presence of which the Speculative Reason had been driven.  Then will it be clearly seen how he would answer the fundamental question of Moral Philosophy,—­Wherein does the quality of Goodness originally reside?

The answer, from Kant’s own lips, is this:  “There is nothing in the world, nor, generally speaking, even out of it, possible to be conceived, which can without limitation be held good, but a Good Will.”  The good is not in the end attained, not even in the volition, but is a principle resident in the will itself.  “The volition is between its principle a priori, which is formal, and its spring a posteriori, which is material; and since it must be determined by something, and being deprived of every material principle, it must be determined by the formal.”

Now, although President Hopkins considers Moral Philosophy as a philosophy of ends, he evidently does not mean ends a posteriori and material, but ends a priori, using the term as the best objective translation of principles.  Almost as if with the conscious design of making his work harmonize with the groundwork furnished by Kant, he has developed a graduated series of conditions, according to which we ascend “the great world’s altar-stairs,” from lower and conditioned good up to that good which is the condition of all, itself unlimited, namely, in the will fulfilling its original design.  The “law of limitation,” according to which not only the subordinate powers of man, but even the forces of Nature, from those concerned in the highest animal organization down to that of gravitation, are made to take their places in the chain of dependence which hangs from the human will, is the most important part, scientifically, of the whole work.  It is in accordance with this law that the science of Morals becomes a structure,—­universal in its base and regularly ascending after the order of Nature, harmonious in all its parts, and proceeding upward within hearing of universal harmonies.  Hitherto there has been no such structure; but only tabernacles have been built, because there was no Solomon to build a temple.

Once having determined the connection which there is between the Will and the principle of Good, there still remains to be determined the place which Reason has in this connection.