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653 in you the feelings of hope and fear and the actions to which they prompt, that is, it would produce prudential acquiescence; but it would not generate moral obligation. The Theological theory is as impotent as the Empirical theory to explain the ought-feeling; for, since this feeling is not the same as the dread of penalties, it matters not for the efficiency of the hypothesis whether the penalties be inflicted by a finite or by an infinite sovereign. Power, even though raised to omnipotence, can produce only the effects of power, and these remain forever unmoral. By association with what is moral, they may, of course, take on a borrowed lustre. And so we may do the fullest justice to the doctrine of divine rewards and punishments in the moralisation of mankind, though we should not for a moment agree with Paley that for the source of the sense of obligation we must come in the end to plain heaven and hell.

None of the theories we have examined can save us from the conclusion that duty at its fountain-head is subjective, not objective. The precepts of duty are indeed not self-originated, and on this point the Intuitionist is somewhat in error; but he is on sure ground when he asserts that, at least in the case of adult moral agents, they are self-accepted and self-imposed, not forced upon them by external authorities. The curious supposition of "one lone man in an atheistic universe" offers, from this point of view, no serious difficulty. If such a Robinson Crusoe (who differs from the real one, however, in never having been a member of society) could form an ideal of life, a conception answering, not to what he was or has been, but to the constitutive idea and essence of his humanity, this schema of a good on the whole would, if we may judge of his nature from our own, carry with it a feeling of supremacy to which all conflicting impulses would be required to yield. Such speculations are, however, of little value; for it is doubtful if this Robinson Crusoe could discover any conception of perfect life in the absence of the social institutions, customs, practices, and expectations, which amongst ourselves constitute the indispensable materials and conditions of the idealistic creations of every individual mind; and, of course, without an