Page:Philosophical Review Volume 13.djvu/709

695 the appearance of real existence. All the moralists of a given age give practically the same precepts, yet the precepts of one age are not those of another. Even if the moral idea could be determined speculatively, this would not prove the resulting conception to be either practically applicable or obligatory; abstract reason is as incapable of producing the form as the matter of morality. It is not abstract man, but men, to whom morality applies. Modern moral theory ascertains rather than constructs. Duty is only an abstraction, not a ;&#39;fact of reason'; theory and logic do not confer the character of reality or of obligation, any more than they alter the situation of an object or act. Moral laws are imposed upon individuals by the material and moral sanction of society. It is this sanction and not reason which gives birth to obligation. Thus an action is not obligatory because good, but good because obligatory. Duty is imposed by custom and social inertia. Tendency is not reason, yet psychology shows the former to be the source of action. The deliberative consciousness is concerned with means; from it we learn, not what we must reasonably wish, but how to fulfill our (possibly irrational) inclinations. The conclusion that reason imposes an ideal upon us is falsely reached by arguing that we first desire a thing because it is beautiful, and then think it is beautiful because of the intensity of our desire. The scientific analysis of morality originated in German historicism and French positivism, in the absorption of the individual in society, and in the historical study of his rights. An intellectual and a social factor are here involved.

Despite the apparent lack of relation between morality and the fundamental principles of mechanical science, the only permanent basis for morality and guide for human conduct are to be found in the principles of universal motion and universal causation. Evidence has shown that all bodies are in a state of constant internal motion involving conversion of energy. In man, this conversion of energy, particularly in its relation to similar action in other human beings and throughout the environment generally, produces, through the medium of the nervous system, consciousness and the phenomena of morality. Thus man's moral life is inexorably governed by material necessity, and the rate of human progress is as definitely fixed as the speed of the celestial bodies. Mind or soul is not a distinct entity, but is merely the collection of faculties termed consciousness, observation, comparison, etc. It is a species of life, which may in turn be defined as a kind of motion, viz., motion in organic structure. Wherever this exists, questions of morality arise. Moral and immoral acts are as much cases of cause and effect as is the motion of a steam-engine, and are apparently less certain only because more complex. Since all men act under compulsion, even in committing crime, they should not