Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: With an Updated Translation, Introduction, and Notes

by Immanuel Kant

In the natural predispositions of an organized being, i.e. a being arranged purposivelyb for life, we assume as a principle that no instrument is to be encountered in it for any end except that which is the most suitable to and appropriate for it.7 Now if, in a being that has reason and a will, its preservation, its welfare—in a word, its happiness—were the real end of nature, then nature would have hit on a very bad arrangement in appointing reason in this creature to accomplish the aim. For all the actions it has to execute toward this aim, and the entire rule of its conduct, would be prescribed to it much more precisely through instinct, and that end could be obtained far more safely through it than could ever happen through reason; and if, over and above this, reason were imparted to the favored creature, it would have served it only to make it consider the happy predisposition of its nature, to admire it, rejoice in it, and to make it grateful to the beneficent cause of it, but not to subject its faculty of desire to that weak and deceptive guidance, and meddle in the aim of nature; in a word, nature would have prevented reason from breaking out into practical use and from having the presumption, with its weak insight, to think out for itself the project of happiness and the means of attaining it; nature would have taken over not only the choice of the ends but also of the means, and with wise provision would have entrusted both solely to instinct.