Page:The Spirit of the Chinese People.djvu/98

52 properties and qualities of the outward forms of things. Reason, our reasoning power, therefore, enables us to see in moral relations only the definable properties and qualities, the mores, the morality, as it is rightly called, the outward manner and dead form, the body, so to speak, of right and wrong, or justice. Reason, our reasoning power alone, cannot make us see the undefinable, living, absolute essence of right and wrong, or justice, the life or soul, so to speak, of justice. For this reason Laotzu says: "The moral law that can be expressed in language is not the absolute moral law. The moral idea that can be defined with words is not the absoluleabsolute [sic] moral idea." The moral law of the moralist again tells us we must obey the law of our being, called Conscience, i.e., our heart. But then, as the Wise Man in the Hebrew Bible says, there are many devices in a man's heart. Therefore, when we take Conscience, our heart, as the law of our being and obey it, we are liable and apt to obey, not the voice of what I have called the soul of justice, the indefinable absolute essence of justice, but the many devices in a man's heart.

In other words Religion tells us in obeying the law of our being we must obey the true law of our being, not the animal or carnal law of our being called by St. Paul the law of the mind of the flesh, and very well defined by the famous disciple of Auguste Comte, Monsieur Littre, as the law of self-preservation and reproduction; but the true law of our being