unconditioned duty, is to feed the reader with empty words, nay more, is to give him a contradictio in adjecto to digest.

Every obligation derives all sense and meaning; simply and solely from its relation to threatened punishment or promised reward. Hence, long before Kant was thought of, Locke says: “For since it would be utterly in vain, to suppose a rule set to the free actions of man, without annexing to it some enforcement of good and evil to determine his will; we must, wherever we suppose a law, suppose also some reward or punishment annexed to that law.” (Essay on the Human Understanding, Bk. II., ch. 33, � 6). What ought to be done is therefore necessarily conditioned by punishment or reward; consequently, to use Kant's language, it is essentially and inevitably hypothetical, and never, as he