one, if need there be, as there manifestly
is in not a few critical moments, and as there is not infrequently in the
inward experience of every man who means to do his duty.

*Butler* (A. D. 1692-1752), in his "Ethical Discourses," aims mainly and
successfully to demonstrate the rightful supremacy of conscience. His
favorite conception is of the human being as himself a household [_an
economy_],--the various propensities, appetites, passions, and affections,
the members,--Conscience, the head, recognized as such by all, so that
there is, when her sovereignty is owned, an inward repose and
satisfaction; when she is disobeyed, a sense of discord and rebellion, of
unrest and disturbance. This is sound and indisputable, and it cannot be
more clearly stated or more vividly illustrated than by Butler; but he
manifestly regards conscience as legislator no less than judge, and thus
fails to recognize any objective standard of right. It is evident that on
his ground there is no criterion by which honestly erroneous moral
judgments can be revised, or by which a discrimination can be made between
the results of education or involuntary prejudice, and the right as
determined by the nature of things and the standard of intrinsic fitness.

Of all modern ethical writers since the time of Cudworth and Clarke, none
so much as approaches the position occupied by *Richard Price* (A. D.
1723-1791), a London dissenting divine, a warm advocate of American
independence, and the intimate friend of John Adams. He maintained that
right and wrong are inherent and necessary, immutable and eternal
characteristics, not dependent on will or command, but on the intrinsic
nature of the act, and determined with unerring accuracy by conscience,
whenever the nature of the case is clearly known. "Morality," he writes,
"is fixed on an immovable basis, and appears not to be in any sense
factitious, or the arbitrary production of any power, human or divine; but
equally everlasting and necessary with all truth and reason." "Virtue is
of intrinsic value and of indispensable obligation; not the creature of
will, but necessary and immutable; not local and temporary, but of equal
extent and antiquity with the Divine mind; not dependent on power, but the
guide of all power."(23)

*Paley* (A. D. 1743-1805) gives a definition of virtue, remarkable for its
combination of three partial theories. Virtue, according to him, is "the
doing good to mankind, in obedience to