Mother Goose in Prose
Contents Introduction Sing a Song o' Sixpence The Story of Little Boy Blue Cat and the Fiddle The Black Sheep Old King Cole Mistress Mary The Wond'rous Wise Man What Jack Horner Did The Man in the Moon The Jolly Miller The Little Man and His Little Gun Hickory Dickory Dock Little Bo-Peep The Story of Tommy Tucker Pussy-cat Mew How the Beggars Came to Town Tom, the Piper's Son Humpty Dumpty The Woman Who Lived in a Shoe
another's; I can at most, if my own, approve it; if another's,
sometimes even love it; i.e., look on it as favourable to my own
interest. It is only what is connected with my will as a principle, by
no means as an effect- what does not subserve my inclination, but
overpowers it, or at least in case of choice excludes it from its
calculation- in other words, simply the law of itself, which can be an
object of respect, and hence a command. Now an action done from duty
must wholly exclude the influence of inclination and with it every
object of the will, so that nothing remains which can determine the
will except objectively the law, and subjectively pure respect for
this practical law, and consequently the maxim * that I should follow
this law even to the thwarting of all my inclinations.
* A maxim is the subjective principle of volition. The objective
principle (i.e., that which would also serve subjectively as a
practical principle to all rational beings if reason had full power
over the faculty of desire) is the practical law.
Thus the moral worth of an action does not lie in the effect
expected from it, nor in any principle of action which requires to
borrow its motive from this expected effect. For all these effects-
agreeableness of one's condition and even the promotion of the
Contents Introduction Sing a Song o' Sixpence The Story of Little Boy Blue Cat and the Fiddle The Black Sheep Old King Cole Mistress Mary The Wond'rous Wise Man What Jack Horner Did The Man in the Moon The Jolly Miller The Little Man and His Little Gun Hickory Dickory Dock Little Bo-Peep The Story of Tommy Tucker Pussy-cat Mew How the Beggars Came to Town Tom, the Piper's Son Humpty Dumpty The Woman Who Lived in a Shoe