*I may be excused from adducing examples to elucidate this
principle, as those which have already been used to elucidate the
categorical imperative and its formula would all serve for the like
purpose here.
Looking back now on all previous attempts to discover the
principle of morality, we need not wonder why they all failed. It
was seen that man was bound to laws by duty, but it was not observed
that the laws to which he is subject are only those of his own giving,
though at the same time they are universal, and that he is only
bound to act in conformity with his own will; a will, however, which
is designed by nature to give universal laws. For when one has
conceived man only as subject to a law (no matter what), then this law
required some interest, either by way of attraction or constraint,
since it did not originate as a law from his own will, but this will
was according to a law obliged by something else to act in a certain
manner. Now by this necessary consequence all the labour spent in
finding a supreme principle of duty was irrevocably lost. For men
never elicited duty, but only a necessity of acting from a certain
interest.
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