form a systematic whole.
Rational beings, as subject to a law requiring them to treat themselves
and others as ends and never merely as means, enter into a systematic
union by means of common objective laws, _i.e._ into an (ideal) Empire
or Realm of Ends, from the laws being concerned about the mutual
relations of rational beings as Ends and Means. In this Realm, a
rational being is either Head or Member: Head, if legislating
universally and with complete independence; Member, if also
universally, but at the same time subject to the laws. When now the
maxim of the will does not by nature accord necessarily with the demand
of the objective principle--that the will through its maxim be able to
regard itself at the same time as legislating; universally--a practical
constraint is exerted by the principle, which is _Duty_, lying on every
Member in the Realm of Ends (not on the Head) alike. This necessity of
practice reposes, not on feeling, impulse, or inclination, but on the
relation between rational beings arising from the fact that each, as
End-in-self, legislates universally. The Reason gives a universal
application to every maxim of the Will; not from any motive of
interest, but from the idea of the _Dignity_ of a rational being that
follows no law that it does not itself at the same time give.

Everything in the Realm of Ends has either a _Price_ or a _Dignity_.
Skill, Diligence, &c., bearing on human likings and needs, have a
_Market-price_; Qualities like Wit, Fancy, &c., appealing to Taste or
Emotional Satisfaction, have an _Affection-price_. But Morality, the
only way of being End-in-self, and legislating member in the Realm of
Ends, has an intrinsic _Worth or Dignity_, calculable in nothing else.
Its worth is not in results, but in dispositions of Will; its actions
need neither recommendation from a subjective disposition or taste, nor
prompting from immediate tendency or feeling. Being laid on the Will by
Reason, they make the Will, in the execution, the object of an
immediate _Respect_, testifying to a Dignity beyond all price. The
grounds of these lofty claims in moral goodness and virtue are the
participation by a rational being in the universal legislation, fitness
to be a member in a possible Realm of Ends, subjection only to
self-imposed laws. Nothing having value but as the law confers it, an
unconditional, incomparable worth attaches to the giving of the law,
and _Respect_ is the only word that expresses