Page:Philosophical Review Volume 12.djvu/159

No. 2.] If this conformity is the criterion of Right, every action which is performed by an intelligent being is right. In another sense, however, all purposive action is an endeavor to make things different from what they are, i.e., to realize some ideal; and moral activity is that which realizes the right ideal. It might well be maintained, therefore, that the essence of morality is the effort to make things other than they are, to alter them in order that they may conform to our ideal of right. The crucial question then is: What is the ideal which ought to be realized in the actual world? This is a question which reason cannot answer, and Clarke's own statements constitute a tacit recognition of the truth of this assertion.

The absurdities which are inherent in this form of rationalism are realized to the full in a work which was famous in its day and which is entitled The Religion of Nature Delineated. Wollaston, the author of this book, expresses his views with clearness, with precision, and without fear of reproach. The difference between moral good and evil, he tells us, is at bottom the same as the difference between true and. false. Since truth consists in recognizing things to be what they are, virtue consists in 'treating things as being what they are.' Virtue is the practice of truth, and vice is, therefore, the practice of lying. "A true proposition may be denied, or things may be denied to be what they are, by deeds as well as by express words." Indeed, to contradict any proposition by action is "a fuller and more effectual contradiction than can possibly be made by words only;" for actions are facts, and "facts express more strongly even than words themselves." Thus, "if T takes or uses P's property without the consent of P, he declares it to be his when it is not his, and so acts a lie, in which consists the idea and formal ratio of moral evil." "If I, being of ability to afford now and then something in charity to the poor, should yet never give them anything at