THE ABSOLUTENESS OF THE MORAL LAW.
THE sanction of the moral law is not derived, as Mr. Romanes considers, from the fact that it is our interest to obey it. He is greatly in error in supposing that the reason why it is the chief end of man to glorify God is because this is the happiest thing for him to do. That is not the reason. And that Mr. Romanes can suppose it to be the reason is a melancholy testimony to the absolutely unethical nature of his philosophy. The moral law is absolute. The obligation of the categorical imperative does not arise from the fact that we shall be comfortable if we obey it. A thing is right simply because it is right. Neither personal nor tribal advantage is the measure of ethics. The idea of obligation has not its root in the idea of utility. The concept of justice is not derivate; it is original. Honesty may be the best policy, but a thing is not honest because it is politic. "Virtue alone is happiness below," Pope declares in his splendid verse, and he is right. But it is not because of the reward inherent in it that virtue is virtue. "The idea of duty differs by the whole diameter of existence from the idea of self-interest." True it is, and the first of truths, that— "Because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom, in the scorn of consequence." Consequence! It is beside the question. "Better were it," says Cardinal Newman, "for sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul should tell one willful untruth, though it harm no one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse." This is the language of the theologian. But the philosopher gives a like judgment. "The dictum, 'All's well that ends well,'" Kant happily observes, "has no place in morals." And morals have no real place in any philosophy which bases itself on the doctrines of utilitarianism.—The Forum.