This is the susceptibility for pleasure or displeasure, merely
from the consciousness of the agreement or disagreement of our
action with the law of duty. Now, every determination of the
elective will proceeds from the idea of the possible action through
the feeling of pleasure or displeasure in taking an interest in it
or its effect to the deed; and here the sensitive state (the affection
of the internal sense) is either a pathological or a moral feeling.
The former is the feeling that precedes the idea of the law, the
latter that which may follow it.

  Now it cannot be a duty to have a moral feeling, or to acquire it;
for all consciousness of obligation supposes this feeling in order
that one may become conscious of the necessitation that lies in the
notion of duty; but every man (as a moral being) has it originally
in himself; the obligation, then, can only extend to the cultivation
of it and the strengthening of it even by admiration of its
inscrutable origin; and this is effected by showing how it is just, by
the mere conception of reason, that it is excited most strongly, in
its own purity and apart from every pathological stimulus; and it is
improper to call this feeling a moral sense; for the word sense
generally means a theoretical power of perception directed to an
object; whereas the moral feeling (like pleasure and displeasure in
general) is something merely subjective, which supplies no
knowledge. No man is wholly destitute of moral feeling, for if he were
totally unsusceptible of this sensation he would be morally dead; and,
to speak in the language of physicians, if the moral vital force could
no longer produce any effect on this feeling, then his humanity
would be dissolved (as it were by chemical laws) into mere animality
and be irrevocably confounded with the mass of other physical
beings. But we have no special sense for (moral) good and evil any
more than for truth, although such expressions are often used; but
we have a susceptibility of the free elective will for being moved
by pure practical reason and its law; and it is this that we call
the moral feeling.

                    B. OF CONSCIENCE

  Similarly, conscience is not a thing to be acquired, and it is not a
duty to acquire it; but every man, as a moral being, has it originally
within him. To be bound to have a conscience would be as much as to
say to be under a duty to recognize duties. For conscience is
practical reason which, in every case of law, holds before a man his
duty for acquittal or condemnation; consequently it does not refer
to an object, but only to the subject (affecting the moral feeling
by its own act); so that it is an inevitable fact, not an obligation
and duty. When, therefore, it is said, "This man has no conscience,"
what is meant is that he pays no heed to its dictates. For if he
really had none, he would not take credit to himself for anything done
according to duty, nor reproach himself with violation of duty, and
therefore he would be unable even to conceive the duty of having a
conscience.

  I pass by the manifold subdivisions of conscience, and only
observe what follows from what has just been said, namely, that
there is no such thing as an erring conscience. No doubt it is
possible sometimes to err in the objective judgement whether something
is a duty or not; but I cannot err in the subjective whether I have
compared it with my practical (here judicially acting) reason for
the purpose of that judgement: for if I erred I would not have
exercised practical judgement at all, and in that case there is
neither truth nor error. Unconscientiousness is not want of
conscience, but the propensity not to heed its judgement. But when a
man is conscious of having acted according to his conscience, then, as
far as regards guilt or innocence, nothing more can be required of
him, only he is bound to enlighten his understanding as to what is
duty or not; but when it comes or has come to action, then
conscience speaks involuntarily and inevitably. To act conscientiously
can, therefore, not be a duty, since otherwise it would be necessary
to have a second conscience, in order to be conscious of the act of
the first.

  The duty here is only to cultivate our con. science, to quicken
our attention to the voice of the internal judge, and to use all means
to secure obedience to it, and is thus our indirect duty.

                    C. OF LOVE TO MEN

  Love is a matter of feeling, not of will or volition, and I cannot
love because I will to do so, still less because I ought (I cannot
be necessitated to love); hence there is no such thing as a duty to
love. Benevolence, however (amor benevolentiae), as a mode of
action, may be subject to a law of duty. Disinterested benevolence
is often called (though very improperly) love; even where the
happiness of the other is not concerned, but the complete and free
surrender of all one's own ends to the ends of another (even a
superhuman) being, love is spoken of as being also our duty. But all
duty is necessitation or constraint, although it may be
self-constraint according to a law. But what is done from constraint
is not done from love.

  It is a duty to do good to other men according to our power, whether
we love them or not, and this duty loses nothing of its weight,
although we must make the sad remark that our species, alas! is not
such as to be found particularly worthy of love when we know it more
closely. Hatred of men, however, is always hateful: even though
without any active hostility it consists only in complete aversion
from mankind (the solitary misanthropy). For benevolence still remains
a duty even towards the manhater, whom one cannot love, but to whom we
can show kindness.