an wish, to become universal laws? If so, this
must be bound up with the very notion of the will of a rational being;
the relation of the will to itself being to be determined _a priori_ by
pure Reason. The Will is considered as a power of self-determination to
act according to certain laws as represented to the mind, existing only
in rational beings. And, if the objective ground of self-determination,
or _End_, is supplied by mere Reason, it must be the same for all
rational beings. _Ends_ may be divided into _Subjective_, resting upon
individual _Impulses_ or subjective grounds of desire; and _Objective_,
depending on _Motives_ or objective grounds of Volition valid for all
rational beings. The principles of action are, in the one case,
_Material_, and, in the other, _Formal, i.e._, abstracted from all
subjective ends. Material ends, as relative, beget only hypothetical
Imperatives. But, supposed some thing, the presence of which in itself
has an absolute value, and which, as End-in-self, can be a ground of
fixed laws; there, and there only, can be the ground of a possible
categorical Imperative, or Law of Practice.

Now, such an End-in-self (not a thing with merely conditional value,--a
means to be used arbitrarily) is Man and every rational being, as
_Person_. There is no other objective end with absolute value that can
supply to the Reason the supreme practical principle requisite for
turning subjective principles of action into objective principles of
volition. Rational Nature as End-in-self is a subjective principle to a
man having this conception of his own being, but becomes objective when
every rational being has the same from the same ground in Reason. Hence
a new form (the second) to the practical Imperative: _Act so as to use
Humanity (Human Nature) as well in your own person, as in the person of
another, ever as end also, and never merely as means_.

To this new formula, the old examples are easily squared. Suicide is
using one's person as a mere means to a tolerable existence; breaking
faith to others is using them as means, not as ends-in-self; neglect of
self-cultivation is the not furthering human nature as end-in-self in
one's own person; withholding help is refusing to further Humanity as
end-in-self through the medium of the aims of others. [In a note he
denies that 'the trivial, Do to others as you would,' &c., is a full
expression of the law of duty: it contains the ground, neither of
duties to s