Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/84

Rh suppose your present physical beliefs falsified, if the All-Father changed his mind, and came to hate his children, or if, per impossibile, the Devil triumphed, or the eternal Ideas melted away like snow, or the universal Reason became insane, or the Consciences of all men grew corrupt, would that alter the ideal for you? If the moral ideal assumes its desired position as judge of all things, then what matters it to the ideal if evil is triumphant in the world? “Fiend, I defy thee with a calm, fixed mind,” the idealist will say, after the manner of Shelley’s Prometheus, and that however much the real world may threaten him. Therefore how can the Is predetermine the Ought to be? But if the Ought to be be independent of the Is, how does discussion about the power of God, or his goodness, about the universality of conscience, or its inner strength as a feeling, affect our judgment of the ideal distinction between right and wrong?

Thus we are thrown back and forth between the conflicting demands of criticism. “Give us a moral system that is no caprice of thine,” say the critics of one sort. That seems reasonable. Therefore we affirm, “This system of ours is founded on a rock of eternal truth,” namely, on God’s will, or on the intuition of universal conscience, or on some like fact of the world. But thereupon other critics say to us: “Wherein do you differ from those who say that might is right, or that success determines the right, or that whatever exists ought to exist? For after all you say, something that is, ought to be, merely because it is.” And always still other critics are