Merely to act according to some teleological or determining principle gives man no preeminence above Nature, except in degree.  That which is peculiar to man is that he has the faculty of acting according to laws as represented and reflected upon in the light of thought,—­to which reason is absolutely indispensable.  Reason is therefore necessary to choice,—­to freedom.  There can, therefore, no more be goodness without reason than there can be without will.  Yet there might be, as Kant justly argues, if good were to be in any case identified with mere happiness.  “For,” says he, “all the actions which man has to perform with a view to happiness, and the whole rule of his conduct, would be much more exactly presented to him by instinct, and that end had been much more certainly attained than it ever can be by reason; and should the latter also be bestowed on the favored creature, it must be of use only in contemplating the happy predisposition lodged in instinct, to admire this, to rejoice in it, and be grateful for it to the beneficent Cause; in short, Nature would have prevented reason from any practical use in subduing appetite, etc., and from excogitating for itself a project of happiness; she would have taken upon herself not only the choice of ends, but the means, and had with wise care intrusted both to instinct merely.”  The fact, then, that reason has been given, and has been endowed with a practical use, is sufficient to prove that some more worthy end than felicity is designed,—­namely, a will good in itself,—­rationally good,—­that is, from choice.

Out of the rationality of will is developed its morality.  Here, only, is found the possibility of failure in respect of the end constitutionally indicated,—­here only the avenues of temptation, by which alien elements come in to array the man against himself in a terrible conflict, so sublime that it is a spectacle to heavenly powers.  It is only as this rationality is clearly developed, and is allotted its just place in Moral Science, that the universal structure to which we have already alluded, and which, as we saw, culminated in the will, assumes its peculiar sublimity.  For the voluntariness which is consciously realized in reason gives man the mastery over constitutional processes, not merely to direct, but even to thwart them; nor this merely for himself, but it is in his power, through the nullification of his own constitution, to nullify also that of the world, to dally with the institutions of Nature, and on the grandest scale to play the meddler.

Merely of itself, apart from reason, the will could only work out its teleological type in darkness and by blind necessity; there could be no goodness, for this involves conscious elements.  But through reason, that which of itself the will would yield as unconscious impulse obtains representation, and thus becomes a recognized principle, which in connection with the feelings involves an element of obligation.