regulate his actions here and now, precisely as all actions shall finally be regulated in that ideal society. Morality, like history, is likewise incomprehensible from the viewpoint of the individual.—Kant returns to this theory two years later (1786 in the essay on Muthmasslicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte). Civilization and nature are contradictory principles (so far Rousseau was right) "until perfect art becomes nature once more, which is the final aim of the moral determination of the human race." Kant therefore arrived at this definitive ethical theory by the historical or social-psychological method, and Rousseau's conception of the problem of civilization influenced him at this point, just as it did at an earlier stage of his ethical reflection.—But in the mind of Kant that sublime anticipation appears with such ideality and absoluteness that he regarded the fundamental moral law as a manifestation from a super-empirical world and he forgot his historical and psychological basis. (Cf. the author's essay: Rousseau's Einfluss auf die definitive Form der Kant'schen Ethik, in Kantstudien, II, 1898.)
2. In the first draft of his ethics (1785) Kant discovers the fundamental moral law by means of an analysis of the practical moral consciousness. That action alone is good which springs from pure regard for the moral law. Neither authority nor experience can be the source of this sense. Moral principles reveal the inmost, supersensible nature of our volition, and neither psychology nor theology can here furnish the basis. The fact is the more evident in that there are elements in human nature which impel us in directions which are contrary to the moral law. The moral law manifests itself in opposition to these empirical and egoistic tendencies in the form of duty, an unconditional command, a categorical imperative. The distinct-
