The objection against the validity of our knowledge of moral distinctions is stated by Hume: "In every system of morality which I have hitherto met with .. the author proceeds for some time

in the ordinary way of reasoning; . . . . when of a sudden I am surprised to find that instead of the usual copula of propositions, is and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought or an ought not. This change is imperceptible, but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought or ought not expresses some new relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time a reason should be given for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to readers; and am persuaded that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded on the relations of objects nor is perceived by the reason." This objection is already answered. It is true that the idea expressed in the ought and the ought not is different from that expressed in the is and is not; and it is a unique idea different from all others. It is also true that it cannot be deduced from any other idea, though it presupposes the knowledge of principles or truths of reason. But it is not true that philosophers surreptitiously introduce it without declaring its distinctive significance and its origin. It originates in rational intuition. And I have already demonstrated that rational intuitions are of the highest certainty, that on their validity as knowledge all reasoning and all science depend, and that they are constituent elements of all rational intelligence. In these our knowledge of moral distinctions is rooted deep in our constitution as rational beings and ramified beneath the entire outgrowth of knowledge.

Besides it must be noticed that Hume's objection recoils on himself. Since human thought cannot escape using the ought and the ought not, and there is nothing in his philosophy which can account for this, the true inference is that his philosophy is contrary to reason and false, not that moral distinctions are unfounded.

36. Moral Law Universal, Immutable, Imperative. I. Law is universal, immutable and imperative because it is the universal and immutable truth of Reason known as law to action.

It is essential in the idea of law that it be universal and unchangeable, the law for all times and all places. I refer to law in its principles, not to the rules for applying those principles to determine

* Treatise of Human Nature, B. iii. Part i. Section 1.

the right or wrong of outward acts under changing circumstances. But in determining what is duty in these details there must be appeal to universal and immutable principles or we can never determine the right or wrong of particular actions, just as reasoning however ramified must be regulated by universal principles, or it can never conclude in a true inference.

It is equally essential in the idea of law that it be imperative. It is not advice or persuasion but command. It does not tell us what is agreeable or profitable, but what is obligatory and right. It is the supreme and final standard of right from which there is no appeal and which excludes all right to question or disobey. If there is any difference between right and wrong there must be a law universally, unchangeably, supremely right.

This universality, immutability and imperativeness are essential in law because law is universal and immutable truth recognized as law to action. It is either some primitive principle known in rational intuition or some truth inferred from it. Private opinion does not constitute the law of right. A particular fact does not. If I know that a particular course of action leads me into the fire, that fact is not a law forbidding me to go into the fire; for it may be a martyr-fire. But universal truth, whenever it bears on the will's determination, is a law to the will; and the law is as universal and as immutable as the truth. It is also imperative; for law is nothing else but truth recognized as imperative to will. The it is of a fact can issue only in an unregulated I will. It is only the must be of universal truth which resolves into I ought.

II. The law as universal, immutable and imperative implies the existence of God, the Supreme and absolute Reason in whom the Law is eternal. We have seen that this is implied in the idea of the True. It is implied also and even more impressively in the idea of the Right; for in this the voice of the Supreme lawgiver speaks in every man's consciousness uttering a law transcending him and imperative on him. As a universal truth of reason known as law to action, he knows it as law, not to himself alone, but to all rational beings; yet he is conscious that he is not its author and has not authority to enforce obedience on others. There must then be a lawgiver above all men and having authority to command all. The truths and laws recognized by man's reason are without significance and reality as universal truths and laws except as they are truths and laws eternal in a Reason absolute supreme, and thus regulative of all thought and energy and dominant throughout the universe.

and

The Absolute Being, however, is not a merely speculative Reason, seing in itself all truth, law, perfection and good, but an energizing

Reason realizing in finite creations the archetypes of all truth, right, perfection and good which it sees eternal in itself. And these archetypes expressed and realized are the constitution of the universe.

III. Hence all wrong-doing has falsehood and absurdity underlying it as its intellectual basis. Selfishness, if justified, would imply that the selfish person is supreme and that God and all creatures exist to serve him, while he serves no one, an error more extravagant than the old astronomy that the planets and sun and all the stars revolve daily around the earth. Hence the Bible calls the transgressor indiscrimi nately a sinner or a fool.

IV. Hence law requires conformity to the fundamental realities in the constitution of things. Off Nova Scotia, on the route of steamships to England, is Sable Island. It is but a speck on the chart, but that speck represents reality; the navigator must shape his course to avoid it or be dashed in pieces on it. So truth is correlative to reality; law declares the deepest realities of existence and bids us shape our course in reference to them or be miserably wrecked. It is a command requiring conformity to the fundamental truths of reason and the fundamental realities of the constitution of things.

V. Action in transgression of law must issue in failure and loss. Man, in the exercise of his reason, may transgress moral law. Moral law does not declare the certainty or necessity of an action, but only its obligation. But if man transgresses moral law he is spending his strength in trying to give reality to an absurdity. Selfishness, for example, is a continuous endeavor to attain the highest good by selfish getting and selfish indulgence. But the efforts of a life thus spent must issue in failure. A man may spend his estate and his life in trying to make a machine on the principle of a perpetual and self-perpetuating motion. But he only wastes his estate and life in trying to realize the absurd and impossible. So a man may spend his life in sinning, but it can be only a wasted life. He "loses himself or is cast away." I have called the truths of reason, which determine what is possible for power to effect, the "flammantia moenia mundi." If a man flings himself against these burning barriers he flings himself into the fire everlasting. Truth is the fire of hell.

VI. Law as imperative implies that it is enforced by punishment inflicted by the government for disobedience. This is of the essence of law; otherwise it ceases to be law and weakens into advice. This is attested in the moral constitution of men in the consciousness of ill-desert for sin. And it is no capricious or arbitrary infliction, but is necessary in the constitution of the universe. Thou shalt waits always terrible behind I ought.

VII. We have now the answer to the common objection that intui

tive ethics is empty of significance; that its fundamental principle is an identical proposition, "Right is right because it is right." The principle is, “What is true to the reason is law to the will." It has for content the truths of reason. It rests on the fact that man, being in the image of God, is endowed with reason and free will, and that reason, the same in kind everywhere and always, is supreme and absolute in God. The fundamental principle of intuitive ethics has for content all that is true to human reason, and all that is true to the divine reason, so far as known to man, and all that is fundamental in the constitution of the universe. Nor are we obliged to say truth is true because it is true; it is true because it is eternal in the absolute reason, because it is the truth in which the universe is grounded and of which the universe is the expression. Truth is concrete throughout to its primal essence, as it is eternal and archetypal in the absolute Reason.

137. Intuitive Ethics distinguished from Erroneous Theories.

I. It is unnecessary to delay on theories like those of Diderot and Mandeville, which ascribe the origin of moral ideas to association of ideas and to education; for these deny the reality of moral obligation. I have already shown that the association of ideas in the experience of an individual cannot account for the necessary beliefs of reason.

II. The true Ethics is distinguished from theories which attempt to derive the idea of right from that of happiness or the highest good. The ideas of right and obligation have their origin in reason and have a unique and distinctive meaning; the ethical ideas cannot be derived from nor identified with the idea of happiness or good. Every theory which attempts to derive the ethical ideas from the idea of happiness or good loses their essential distinctive significance, and resolves the right into the agreeable or the expedient. Thus Locke resolves all moral distinctions into the distinction of pleasure and pain: "We love, desire, rejoice and hope only in respect of pleasure; we hate, fear and grieve only in respect of pain, ultimately." And he exemplifies what love is, from the love of grapes: "When a man declares loves grapes, it is no more but that the taste of grapes delights him."* Theories of this kind annul all essential and distinctive significance of obligation and duty, of right and wrong, of law and authority; they exclude the very ideas of right and obligation; they lose the right in the agreeable or at best in the prudential.

that he

III. The true ethics, affirming that moral distinctions originate in

Essay concerning Human Understanding, B. II., chap. 20, sect. 14, 4. See chap

23, sect. 5-14, and chap. 21, sects. 55, 70, and B. I., chap. 3.

the reason, must be distinguished from theories that these distinctions originate in the feelings; that our moral ideas arise from the feelings which as motives impel us to certain acts as right and deter from others as wrong, and which react in emotions, as in remorse for wrong-doing and satisfaction in right-doing.

This, however, would be false psychology. For a feeling presup poses some reality present to consciousness or contemplated in thought. Sugar is not saccharine because it is agreeable to the taste; it is agreeable to the taste because it is saccharine. So virtue is not right because it gives satisfaction; but it gives satisfaction because it is right. Vice is not wrong because it occasions remorse; it occasions remorse because it is wrong.

Moral feelings, whether motives or emotions, presuppose the knowledge of moral distinctions. If I am conscious of any motive to do right, I must first have an idea of right and some standard of judgment by which to distinguish right from wrong. If I feel remorse for wrong doing or complacency in right doing, these feelings presuppose knowledge of right and wrong. It is to be observed, however, that in the primitive regulative action of intuition before it is formulated or distinctly recognized in thought, the feeling and the intuition coexist. In this sense it is true that feeling is a kind of knowledge.

If the moral feelings arise before any knowledge of right and wrong, then, on account of the absence of that knowledge, there is nothing to distinguish them as moral; they are known merely as agreeable or disagreeable feelings; and the only generalization from them possible would be that some conduct is agreeable and other conduct disagreeable. And there would be no immutable distinction of right and wrong, but it would fluctuate with the feelings. This theory logically sinks back into the theory which derives the idea of right from happiness and thus loses it in the agreeable. Built on the unstable fluctuations of feeling, the theory can never attain a rational and immutable distinction of right and wrong.

This Hume perceived. Alluding to a passage in his Treatise of Human Nature (Book III. Part 1, Sect. 1,) in which he maintains that moral ideas originate not in the reason but in the feelings, he wrote to Hutcheson: "Is not this a little too strong? . . . . I wish from my heart I could avoid concluding that since morality, according to your opinion as well as mine, is determined merely by sentiment, it regards only human nature and human life. . . If morality were determined by reason, that is the same to all rational beings; but nothing but experience can assure us that the sentiments are the same. What experience have we in regard to superior beings? How can we ascribe to them any sentiments at all? They have implanted these sentiments