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A few theses.  Insofar as the individual is seeking happiness, one ought not to tender him any prescriptions as to the path to happiness: for individual happiness springs from one's own unknown laws, and prescriptions from without can only obstruct and hinder it.  The prescriptions called 'moral' are in truth directed against individuals and are in no way aimed at promoting their happiness. They have just as little to do with the 'happiness and welfare of mankind'  a phrase to which is it in any case impossible to attach any distinct concepts, let alone employ them as guiding stars on the dark ocean of moral aspirations.  It is not true, as prejudice would have it, that morality is more favourable to the evolution of reason than immorality is.  It is not true that the unconscious goal in the evolution of every conscious being (animal, man, mankind, etc) is its 'highest happiness': the case, on the contrary, is that every stage of evolution possesses a special and incomparable happiness neither higher nor lower but simply its own. Evolution does not have happiness in view, but evolution and nothing else.  Only if mankind possessed a universally recognised goal would it be possible to propose' thus and thus is the right course of action': for the present there exists no such goal. It is thus irrational and trivial to impose the demands of morality upon mankind.  To recommend a goal to mankind is something quite different: the goal is then thought of as something which lies in our own discretion; supposing the recommendation appealed to mankind, it could in pursuit of it also impose upon itself a moral law, likewise at its own discretion. But up to now the moral law has been supposed to stand above our own likes and dislikes: one did not want actually to impose this law upon oneself, one wanted to take it from somewhere or discover it somewhere or have it commanded to one from somewhere.