Page:Philosophical Review Volume 12.djvu/158

142 Truth is not in a Man's Power to withhold ; but to Act according to the plain Right and Reason of things, this he may, by the natural Liberty of his Will, forbear." But if moral action has the character which he ascribes to it, moral evil is an impossibility, and the freedom of the will cannot explain why the impossible is actual. To do wrong is the same as to believe something which is manifestly self-contradictory. Nothing can explain how this can be done. Not even the freedom of the will can explain this, for no human being is free in the sense that he can do what in the nature of the case is impossible. There is, however, another point which must be emphasized in this connection. If reason is the motive power which lies behind right conduct, the individual who obeys the moral law acts under the compulsion of his rational nature. There is then no difference between moral obligation and rational necessity. An action is not moral, however, if it is performed under compulsion of any kind. Consequently, if the rationalistic view of conduct be adopted, right actions can have no moral value or significance.

The identification of truth and right implies yet another result which is worthy of note. Since reason deals with that which is, the rules of conduct which reason prescribes must have the same reference. If we act according to reason alone, we must act in accordance with things as they are. Clarke, therefore, insists that the whole duty of man is to treat things as they are. Vice consists in the endeavor "to make things be what they are not and cannot be." In view of the eternal and necessary relations which exist between things, reason lays an obligation upon us; but the obligation thus imposed is simply that our actions be in conformity with these eternal and necessary relations. All that reason commands, therefore, is that we should act in accordance with the nature of things. Now in one sense it is characteristic of the rational being to act with a due regard to the relations of things, but this truth has no moral significance. The murderer who destroys a life and the Good Samaritan who preserves one, alike conform their conduct to the nature of things.