roved by, any other truth. You
cannot prove that pleasure is better than pain, or that virtue is
better than pleasure, to any one who judges differently. It does not
follow that all men have an equally clear and delicate moral
consciousness. The power of discriminating moral values differs as
widely as the power of distinguishing musical sounds, or of
appreciating what is excellent in music. Some men may be almost or
altogether without such a power of moral discrimination, just as some
men are wholly {67} destitute of an ear for music; while the higher
degrees of moral appreciation are the possession of the few rather than
of the many. Moral insight is not possessed by all men in equal
measure. Moral genius is as rare as any other kind of genius.

(4) When we attribute Morality to God, it is not meant that the conduct
which is right for men in detail ought to be or could possibly in all
cases be practised by God. It is a childish objection (though it is
sometimes made by modern philosophers who should know better) to allege
with Aristotle that God cannot be supposed to make or keep contracts.
And in the same way, when we claim universal validity for our moral
judgements, we do not mean that the rules suitable for human conduct
would be the same for beings differently organized and constituted.
Our rules of sexual Morality are clearly applicable only to sexually
constituted beings. What is meant in asserting that these rules are
universally and objectively valid is that these are the rules which
every rational intelligence, in proportion as it is rational, will
recognize as being suitable, or conducive to the ideal life, in beings
constituted as we are. The truth that permanent monogamous marriage
represents the true type of sexual relations for human beings will be
none the less an objectively valid ethical truth, because the lower
animals are below it, while superior beings, {68} it may be, are above
it. Universal love is none the less the absolute moral ideal because
it would be absurd to say that beasts of prey do wrong in devouring
other creatures, or because war is sometimes necessary as a means to
the end of love at our present imperfect stage of social and
intellectual development. The means to the highest good vary with
circumstances; the amount of good that is attainable in such and such
circumstances varies also; consequently the right course of conduct
will be different for beings differently const