Such a metaphysic of morals, completely isolated, not mixed with any
anthropology, theology, physics, or hyperphysics, and still less
with occult qualities (which we might call hypophysical), is not
only an indispensable substratum of all sound theoretical knowledge of
duties, but is at the same time a desideratum of the highest
importance to the actual fulfilment of their precepts. For the pure
conception of duty, unmixed with any foreign addition of empirical
attractions, and, in a word, the conception of the moral law,
exercises on the human heart, by way of reason alone (which first
becomes aware with this that it can of itself be practical), an
influence so much more powerful than all other springs* which may be
derived from the field of experience, that, in the consciousness of
its worth, it despises the latter, and can by degrees become their
master; whereas a mixed ethics, compounded partly of motives drawn
from feelings and inclinations, and partly also of conceptions of
reason, must make the mind waver between motives which cannot be
brought under any principle, which lead to good only by mere
accident and very often also to evil.
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