Page:Philosophical Review Volume 5.djvu/446

430 since it concerns our attitude toward the Church, the great moralizing agency of our society. It is at present especially insistent, since the spirit of tolerance is leaving room for laxity of principle, and the progress of scientific knowledge is constantly furnishing us with new views which are not yet thought out, thus leading us to open and careless inconsistency. Rejecting extreme positions, we conclude that "while we should yield full sympathy and respect to the motives that prompt a man to cling to a religious community whose influence he values, even though he has ceased to hold beliefs which the community has formally declared to be essential; and while we should concede broadly the legitimacy of such adhesion, still all such concessions must be strictly limited by the obligations of veracity and good faith." This general principle is to be justified from the Utilitarian standpoint, since the day of teaching by means of deception is passing away.

In society, individuals (or minorities) are usually compelled to do those things, the doing of which brings more of good to society than of harm to the individual, and to leave undone those things, the doing of which brings more of harm to society than of good to the individual. Wrong conduct is conduct by which the individual intends to profit himself at the expense of society; right conduct is that by which the individual intends to sacrifice himself for the benefit of society (i.e., the majority or the ruling minority). Apart from social interference, a man tends naturally to profit by the wrong he does and to suffer by the right. Moral rules are binding on us, because we as individuals are within the scope of social seizure and punishment. There are of course as many actual codes of morality (Moralities that Are), as there are societies. No matter what the society is, whether it is a camping party, or a band of robbers, or a nation, its rules and prohibitions constitute a moral code. The logical outcome of all this is, that there is almost nothing from the standpoint of Morality that Is, or rather from the standpoint of the Moralities that Are, that is not at once both right and wrong. The Rationalist finds in the Morality that Is, as in the Morality that Ought to Be, an utter conflict of obligations and ideals, and no rational ground of decision between them. One object, no matter how abominable, is in the eyes of logic as good as any other to the man