st or the Realist somehow to exist in matter: to the
Metaphysician there may be difficulties in such a view, but the
difficulties are not obvious to common-sense. But surely (whatever may
be thought about physical laws) the moral law, {74} which expresses not
any matter of physical fact but what _ought_ to be thought of acts,
cannot be supposed to exist in a purely material Universe. An 'ought'
can exist only in and for a mind. In what mind, then, does the moral
law exist? As a matter of fact, different people's moral judgements
contradict one another. And the consciousness of no living man can
well be supposed to be a flawless reflection of the absolute moral
ideal. On a non-theistic view of the Universe, then, the moral law
cannot well be thought of as having any actual existence. The
objective validity of the moral law can indeed be and no doubt is
_asserted_, believed in, acted upon without reference to any
theological creed; but it cannot be defended or fully justified without
the pre-supposition of Theism. What we mean by an objective law is
that the moral law is a part of the ultimate nature of things, on a
level with the laws of physical nature, and it cannot be _that_, unless
we assume that law to be an expression of the same mind in which
physical laws originate. The idea of duty, when analysed, implies the
idea of God. Whatever else Plato meant by the 'idea of the good,' this
at least was one of his meanings--that the moral law has its source in
the source of all Reality.

And therefore at bottom popular feeling is right in holding that
religious belief is necessary to Morality. Of course I do not mean to
say that, were {75} religious belief to disappear from the world,
Morality would disappear too. But I do think Morality would become
quite a different thing from what it has been for the higher levels of
religious thought and feeling. The best men would no doubt go on
acting up to their own highest ideal just as if it did possess
objective validity, no matter how unable they might be to reconcile
their practical with their speculative beliefs. But it would not be so
for the many--or perhaps even for the few in their moments of weakness
and temptation, when once the consequences of purely naturalistic
Ethics were thoroughly admitted and realized. The only kind of
objective validity which can be recognized on a purely naturalistic
view of Ethics is conformity to public opinion. The tendency of