a universal law), that is, with law. Ethics, on the contrary, supplies
us with a matter (an object of the free elective will), an end of pure
reason which is at the same time conceived as an objectively necessary
end, i.e., as duty for all men. For, as the sensible inclinations
mislead us to ends (which are the matter of the elective will) that
may contradict duty, the legislating reason cannot otherwise guard
against their influence than by an opposite moral end, which therefore
must be given a priori independently on inclination.

An end is an object of the elective will (of a rational being) by
the idea of which this will is determined to an action for the
production of this object. Now I may be forced by others to actions
which are directed to an end as means, but I cannot be forced to
have an end; I can only make something an end to myself. If,
however, I am also bound to make something which lies in the notions
of practical reason an end to myself, and therefore besides the formal
determining principle of the elective will (as contained in law) to
have also a material principle, an end which can be opposed to the end
derived from sensible impulses; then this gives the notion of an end
which is in itself a duty. The doctrine of this cannot belong to
jurisprudence, but to ethics, since this alone includes in its
conception self-constraint according to moral laws.

For this reason, ethics may also be defined as the system of the
ends of the pure practical reason. The two parts of moral philosophy
are distinguished as treating respectively of ends and of duties of
constraint. That ethics contains duties to the observance of which one
cannot be (physically) forced by others, is merely the consequence
of this, that it is a doctrine of ends, since to be forced to have
ends or to set them before one's self is a contradiction.