Society to make the present important question the subject of a prize essay.

In every age much good morality has been preached; but the explanation of its raison d'�tre has always been encompassed with difficulties. On the whole we discern an endeavour to get at some objective truth, from which the ethical injunctions could-be logically deduced; and it has been sought for both in the nature of things, and in the nature of man; but in vain.

The result was always the same. The will of each human unit was found to gravitate solely towards its own individual welfare, the idea of which in its entirety is designated by the term “blissfulness” (Gl�ckseligkeit); and this striving after self-satisfaction leads mankind by a path very, different to the one morality