[164] It is not, I conceive, commonly held to be indispensable, in order to constitute an act completely right, that a belief that it is right should be actually present in the agent’s mind: it might be completely right, although the agent never actually raised the question of its rightness or wrongness. See p. 225.
[165] The decision would, I think, usually be reached by weighing bad consequences to the agent’s character against bad consequences of a different kind. In extreme cases the latter consideration would certainly prevail in the view of common sense. Thus we should generally approve a statesman who crushed a dangerous rebellion by working on the fear or cupidity of a leading rebel who was rebelling on conscientious grounds. Cf. _post_, Book iv. chap. iii. § 3.
[166] The antithesis of ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ cannot be applied to the condition of right conduct considered in this paragraph: for this formal condition is at once subjective and objective; being, as I argue, involved in our common notion of right conduct, it is, therefore, necessarily judged by us to be of really universal application: and, though it does not secure complete objective rightness, it is an important protection against objective wrongness.
[168] See the _Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten_ (pp. 269-273, Hartenstein; Abbott’s transl. [1879] pp. 54-61). Here Kant first says, “There is therefore but one categorical imperative, namely, this: _Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law_. Now, if all imperatives of duty can be deduced from this one imperative as from their principle ... we shall at least be able to show what we understand by [duty] and what this notion means.” He then demonstrates the application of the principle to four cases, selected as representative of “the many actual duties”; and continues: “if now we attend to ourselves on occasion of any transgression of duty, we shall find that we in fact do not will that our maxim should be a universal law, for that is impossible for us” ...: then, summing up the conclusion of this part of his argument, he says, “we have exhibited clearly and definitely for _every practical application_ the content of the categorical imperative which must contain the principle of all duty, if there is such a thing at all.”