Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/659

643 distinct problems: How does that system of categorical imperatives originate in human society? and, How comes the individual to feel that it has a right to him? This latter question alone—the origin of moral obligation—is the one now to be considered, though it may turn out that the answer is at least a part of the solution of the larger inquiry into the originating conditions of morality in general. Still the current confusion of the two problems is a warning to keep them sharply separated.

Confining ourselves, then, to the feeling of moral obligation alone, I think it must be said that this feeling is not susceptible of resolution into simpler elements, whether it be surveyed in its earliest or in its latest stage of development. It is an experience perfectly simple and unanalyzable; like the thought of being, clear to all who are conscious of it, but incommunicable to any one in whom that consciousness is wanting. Though in its nature the sense of moral obligation is an ultimate feeling, it is yet possible to designate the condition of its emergence in consciousness. That condition is the recognition of a moral law, ideal, or end of life. We are so constituted that what we recognize as right for us to do, that we feel we ought to do. Moralists may differ about the grounds and even the details of rightness; but the Utilitarian, not less than the Intuitionist or Transcendentalist, must admit that whatever is ultimately taken to be right involves an authoritative prescription to do it. That men should have this interest in goodness, and submit themselves to its dictates, are, I conceive, facts as ultimate and as indubitable as the instincts of hunger and thirst or the desire of power or knowledge. It matters not, at present, what we mean by goodness or rightness; the fact is that all men, moralists included, hold some things to be right and others to be wrong; and our point is that this recognition always carries with it a feeling of obligation to pursue what is approved and to eschew what is condemned. So much seems to be involved in any analysis of our experience.

Moral obligation is the soul's response to acknowledged rectitude. Is there, then, no ground of obligation but this