Now reason issues its commands
unyieldingly, without promising anything to the inclinations, and,
as it were, with disregard and contempt for these claims, which are so
impetuous, and at the same time so plausible, and which will not allow
themselves to be suppressed by any command. Hence there arises a
natural dialectic, i.e., a disposition, to argue against these
strict laws of duty and to question their validity, or at least
their purity and strictness; and, if possible, to make them more
accordant with our wishes and inclinations, that is to say, to corrupt
them at their very source, and entirely to destroy their worth- a
thing which even common practical reason cannot ultimately call good.
Thus is the common reason of man compelled to go out of its
sphere, and to take a step into the field of a practical philosophy,
not to satisfy any speculative want (which never occurs to it as
long as it is content to be mere sound reason), but even on
practical grounds, in order to attain in it information and clear
instruction respecting the source of its principle, and the correct
determination of it in opposition to the maxims which are based on
wants and inclinations, so that it may escape from the perplexity of
opposite claims and not run the risk of losing all genuine moral
principles through the equivocation into which it easily falls.
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