In attending to the course taken by conversations in mixed company comprising not only scholars and subtle debaters, but over and above this, men of business, as well as persons of the female sex, one becomes aware that, apart from story-telling and jesting, still another form of entertainment makes its appearance, namely, people giving way to arguing about things. This happens the way it does because story-telling, provided there is to be any novelty or interest about it, soon exhausts itself, while jesting, for its part, becomes easily insipid. Now among all the various kinds of arguing, there is none which evokes such participation (on the part of people otherwise soon affected by boredom, whenever they find themselves confronted with any reasoning of the sophisticated sort) as when the moral worth of this or that action is talked about—a certain kind of liveliness thus being imparted to the company—and all done with the purpose of making out what is the character to be assigned to some person or other. Those who, as regards theoretical questions, look upon everything which savours of subtlety, everything having its source in rumination, as being arid and a matter of vexation, soon join in when what is at issue is to make out the moral value of a good or an evil action of which they are told, and they are just as precise, just as much given to rumination, just as subtle in finding devices for tracking down anything which could lessen, or throw suspicion upon, the purity of the intention (i.e. the degree of virtue encounterable in the action); though this way of proceeding is not to be expected of them when it is any other object of speculation that is under consideration. [Kant continues:] As regards this way of judging things, it frequently happens that it serves to illuminate the character assignable to the people pronouncing judgment upon others, certain persons appearing to be particularly inclined that, in performing their judicial office (principally in respect of those who have departed this life), they ought to defend the good of which they are told, concerning this or that action, against every mortifying imputation of insincerity, and that they ought ultimately to defend the entire worth of the personality against the reproach of dissimulation or hidden malice. Others again, are intent upon bringing forward accusations and imputations with a view to contesting that worth. Still, as regards this latter type, we cannot ascribe to them, in every case, the intention that, whenever they are faced with particular examples of what men do, they mean to argue in such a way as to discard virtue altogether, so as to declare it to be nothing but an empty name. Instead of this, there is frequent evidence that what is in operation here is nothing other than a well-intentioned strictness, resorted to for the purpose of determining genuine moral worth, the reference being to a law which is inflexible in character. And it is when a comparison is made with a law such as this—not with particular examples—that self-conceit, in matters of morality, finds itself considerably diminished, humility being truly felt by everybody—not merely taught—in the face of such severe self-examination. None the less, what becomes plainly visible in the champions of purity of intention (concerning examples which are being brought forward) is that, where there is a presumption of honest dealing, they would gladly remove even the least blemish, this line being taken, for fear that, if all examples had their veracity impugned, and all human virtue should be taken to have the nature of a mere phantom of the brain, and all striving after it rendered to be of no worth, having the character of an idle affectation and of a self-conceit tending only to deceive. (Kant, tr. Cassirer, pp. 190-1)