objective necessity independently. In that case we should still have
gained something considerable by at least determining the true
principle more exactly than had previously been done; but as regards
its validity and the practical necessity of subjecting oneself to
it, we should not have advanced a step. For if we were asked why the
universal validity of our maxim as a law must be the condition
restricting our actions, and on what we ground the worth which we
assign to this manner of acting- a worth so great that there cannot be
any higher interest; and if we were asked further how it happens
that it is by this alone a man believes he feels his own personal
worth, in comparison with which that of an agreeable or disagreeable
condition is to be regarded as nothing, to these questions we could
give no satisfactory answer.

We find indeed sometimes that we can take an interest in a
personal quality which does not involve any interest of external
condition, provided this quality makes us capable of participating
in the condition in case reason were to effect the allotment; that
is to say, the mere being worthy of happiness can interest of itself
even without the motive of participating in this happiness. This
judgement, however, is in fact only the effect of the importance of
the moral law which we before presupposed (when by the idea of freedom
we detach ourselves from every empirical interest); but that we
ought to detach ourselves from these interests, i.e., to consider
ourselves as free in action and yet as subject to certain laws, so
as to find a worth simply in our own person which can compensate us
for the loss of everything that gives worth to our condition; this
we are not yet able to discern in this way, nor do we see how it is
possible so to act- in other words, whence the moral law derives its
obligation.