reason, whereas the former is also an autocracy of it. That is, it
includes a consciousness- not indeed immediately perceived, but
rightly concluded, from the moral categorical imperative- of the power
to become master of one's inclinations which resist the law; so that
human morality in its highest stage can yet be nothing more than
virtue; even if it were quite pure (perfectly free from the
influence of a spring foreign to duty), a state which is poetically
personified under the name of the wise man (as an ideal to which one
should continually approximate).

Virtue, however, is not to be defined and esteemed merely as
habit, and (as it is expressed in the prize essay of Cochius) as a
long custom acquired by practice of morally good actions. For, if this
is not an effect of well-resolved and firm principles ever more and
more purified, then, like any other mechanical arrangement brought
about by technical practical reason, it is neither armed for all
circumstances nor adequately secured against the change that may be
wrought by new allurements.

{INTRODUCTION ^paragraph 25}



REMARK



To virtue = + a is opposed as its logical contradictory
(contradictorie oppositum) the negative lack of virtue (moral
weakness) = o; but vice = a is its contrary (contrarie s. realiter