no man would ever turn to in the stern stress and battle of life, and which, in face of the storm of our passions, would be about as serviceable as a syringe in a great fire.

I have already noticed above how Kant considered it a special merit of his moral law that it is founded solely on abstract, pure a priori conceptions, consequently on pure reason; whereby its validity obtains (he says) not only for men, but for all rational beings as such. All the more must we regret that pure, abstract conceptions a priori, without real contents, and without any kind of empirical basis can never move, at any rate, men; of other rational beings I am of course incapable of speaking.

The second defect, then, in Kant's ethical basis is its lack of real substance. So far this has escaped notice,