these answers: Those
actions are good, or in conformity to the moral law of nature, which
promote the common good _(commune bonum summa lex)_. Individual welfare
must be subordinated to the good of all, of which it forms only a part. The
psychological roots of virtuous action are the social and disinterested
affections, which nature has implanted in all beings, especially in those
endowed with reason. There is nothing in man more pleasing to God than
love. We recognize our obligation to the virtue of benevolence, or that God
commands it, from the rewards and punishments which we perceive to follow
the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of the law,--the subordination of
individual to universal good is the only means of attaining true happiness
and contentment. Men are dependent on mutual benevolence. He who labors
for the good of the whole system of rational beings furthers thereby the
welfare of the individual parts, among whom he himself is one; individual
happiness cannot be separated from general happiness. All duties are
implied in the supreme one: Give to others, and preserve thyself. This
principle of benevolence, advanced by Cumberland with homely simplicity,
received in the later development of English ethics, for which it pointed
out the way, a more careful foundation.

The series of emancipations of morality begins with the Intellectual System
of Ralph Cud worth _(The Intellectual System of the Universe_, 1678; _A
Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality_, 1731). Ethical ideas
come neither from experience nor from civil legislation nor from the will
of God, but are necessary ideas in the divine and the human reason. Because
of their simplicity, universality, and immutability, it is impossible for
them to arise from experience, which never yields anything but that which
is particular and mutable. It is just as impossible that they should spring
from political constitutions, which have a temporal origin, which are
transitory, and which differ from one another. For if obedience to positive
law is right and disobedience wrong, then moral distinctions must have
existed before the law; if, on the other hand, obedience to the civil law
is morally indifferent, then more than ever is it impossible that this
should be the basis of the moral distinctions in question. A law can bind
us only in virtue of that which is necessarily, absolutely, or _per se_
right; therefore the good is independent, also, of the will of G