Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/195

170 the effort to get any basis for ethics save its own irrational caprice; and (b) ethical skepticism, which, as we have seen, is only a preliminary form of the moral insight, and passes over into the latter upon reflection.

9. There is no other distinction between right and wrong save what the dogmatic systems on the one hand give as their capricious determinations, and what the moral insight on the other hand shows as the expression of what it involves.

Our conclusion so far is therefore this: Remain blind if you will; we have no means of preventing you. But if you want to know the whole ethical truth, you can find it only in the moral insight. All else is caprice. To get the moral insight, you must indeed have the will to get the truth as between the conflicting claims of two or more doctrines. This will being given, the moral insight is the necessary outcome even of skepticism itself.

Yet now, after all our argument and enthusiasm, the reader must know that what we have so far portrayed is only the most elementary aspect of the moral insight. The unity that we have insisted upon is so far an empty unity, a negative freedom from conflict. To show the real worth of this whole view, we must pass from the beggarly elements of duty to more advanced conceptions. The moral insight must be so developed as to tell us about the Organization of Life. The empty unity must be filled with content. We must discuss more in concreto what men possessed of the moral insight will do.