approve it; if another’s, sometimes even love it; i.e. look on it as favourable to my own interest.  It is only what is connected with my will as a principle, by no means as an effect—­what does not subserve my inclination, but overpowers it, or at least in case of choice excludes it from its calculation—­in other words, simply the law of itself, which can be an object of respect, and hence a command.  Now an action done from duty must wholly exclude the influence of inclination, and with it every object of the will, so that nothing remains which can determine the will except objectively the law, and subjectively pure respect for this practical law, and consequently the maxim [Footnote:  A maxim is the subjective principle of volition.  The objective principle (i. e. that which would also serve subjectively as a practical principle to all rational beings if reason had full power over the faculty of desire) is the practical law.] that I should follow this law even to the thwarting of all my inclinations.

Thus the moral worth of an action does not lie in the effect expected from it, nor in any principle of action which requires to borrow its motive from this expected effeet.  For all these effects—­ agreeableness of one’s condition, and even the promotion of the happiness of others—­could have been also brought about by other causes, so that for this there would have been no need of the will of a rational being; whereas it is in this alone that the supreme and unconditional good can be found.  The pre-eminent good which we call moral can therefore consist in nothing else than the conception of law in itself, which certainly is only possible in A rational being, in so far as this conception, and not the expected effect, determines the will.  This is a good which is already present in the person who acts accordingly, and we have not to wait for it to appear first in the result. [Footnote:  It might be here objected to me that I take refuge behind the word respect in an obscure feeling, instead of giving a distinct solution of the question by a concept of the reason.  But although respect is a feeling, it is not a feeling received through influence, but is self-wrought by a rational concept, and, therefore, is specifically distinct from all feelings of the former kind, which may be referred either to inclination or fear, What I recognise immediately as a law for me, I recognise with respect.  This merely signifies the consciousness that my will is subordinate to a law, without the intervention of other influences on my sense.  The immediate determination of the will by the law, and the consciousness of this is called respect, so that this is regarded as an effect of the law on the subject, and not as the cause of it.  Respect is properly the conception of a worth which thwarts my self-love.