at the same time as legislating; universally—­a practical constraint is exerted by the principle, which is Duty, lying on every Member in the Realm of Ends (not on the Head) alike.  This necessity of practice reposes, not on feeling, impulse, or inclination, but on the relation between rational beings arising from the fact that each, as End-in-self, legislates universally.  The Reason gives a universal application to every maxim of the Will; not from any motive of interest, but from the idea of the Dignity of a rational being that follows no law that it does not itself at the same time give.

Everything in the Realm of Ends has either a Price or a Dignity.  Skill, Diligence, &c., bearing on human likings and needs, have a Market-price; Qualities like Wit, Fancy, &c., appealing to Taste or Emotional Satisfaction, have an Affection-price.  But Morality, the only way of being End-in-self, and legislating member in the Realm of Ends, has an intrinsic Worth or Dignity, calculable in nothing else.  Its worth is not in results, but in dispositions of Will; its actions need neither recommendation from a subjective disposition or taste, nor prompting from immediate tendency or feeling.  Being laid on the Will by Reason, they make the Will, in the execution, the object of an immediate Respect, testifying to a Dignity beyond all price.  The grounds of these lofty claims in moral goodness and virtue are the participation by a rational being in the universal legislation, fitness to be a member in a possible Realm of Ends, subjection only to self-imposed laws.  Nothing having value but as the law confers it, an unconditional, incomparable worth attaches to the giving of the law, and Respect is the only word that expresses a rational being’s appreciation of that.  Autonomy is thus the foundation of the dignity of human and of all rational nature.

The three different expressions that have been given to the one general principle of morality imply each the others, and differ merely in their mode of presenting one idea of the Reason to the mind. Universal application of the Maxim of Conduct, as if it were a law of nature, is the formula of the Will as absolutely good; universal prohibition against the use of rational beings ever as means only, has reference to the fact that a good will in a rational being is an altogether independent and ultimate End, an End-in-self in all; universal legislation of each for all recognizes the prerogative or special dignity of rational beings, that they necessarily take their maxims from the point of view of all, and must regard themselves, being Ends-in-self, as members in a Realm of Ends (analogous to the Realm, or Kingdom of Nature), which, though merely an ideal and possible conception, none the less really imposes an imperative upon action. Morality, he concludes, is the relation of actions to the Autonomy of the Will,