Practical principles are formal when they abstract from all subjective
ends; they are material when they assume these, and therefore
particular springs of action. The ends which a rational being proposes
to himself at pleasure as effects of his actions (material ends) are
all only relative, for it is only their relation to the particular
desires of the subject that gives them their worth, which therefore
cannot furnish principles universal and necessary for all rational
beings and for every volition, that is to say practical laws. Hence
all these relative ends can give rise only to hypothetical
imperatives.
Supposing, however, that there were something whose existence has in
itself an absolute worth, something which, being an end in itself,
could be a source of definite laws; then in this and this alone
would lie the source of a possible categorical imperative, i.e., a
practical law.
Now I say: man and generally any rational being exists as an end
in himself, not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or
that will, but in all his actions, whether they concern himself or
other rational beings, must be always regarded at the same time as
an end.
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