tainment, whether
this be conceived as that supreme excellence which Plato divined, or as
that all-saving good which is the object of a Christian devotion to
humanity. Morality is the law of life, from its bare preservation to
its supreme fruition. There is a high pretension in morality which is
the necessary consequence of its motive. But man is not, on that
account, in need of those reminders of failure which are so easy to
offer, and which are so impotently true; he needs rather new symbols of
faith, through which his heart may be renewed, and his courage
fortified to proceed with an undertaking of which he cannot see the
end. Faith and courage have brought him thus far:

"Till he well-nigh can tame
Brute mischiefs and control
Invisible things and turn
All warring ills to purposes of good."

{34}

CHAPTER II

THE LOGIC OF THE MORAL APPEAL

There is a phrase, "liberty of conscience," which well expresses the
modern conception of moral obligation. It recognizes that duty in the
last analysis is imposed upon the individual neither by society nor
even by God, but by himself; that there is no authority in moral
matters more ultimate than a man's own rational conviction of what is
best.

We meet here with the application to morality of the motive which
underlies the whole modern reaction against medievalism, the motive
which John Locke so aptly summarized when he said, "We should not judge
of things by men's opinions, but of opinions by things." [1] This is
individualism of the positive temper, the protest against convention
and authority; in behalf, not of license, but of knowledge.
Mediaevalism is condemned, not for its universalism, but for its
arbitrariness and untruth; for its mistaking of the weight of
collective opinion, or of institutional prestige, for the weight of
evidence.

This is the characteristic temper of the modern {35} individualism,
whether it be dominated by a bias for sense or a bias for reason.
Locke, like his forerunner, Bacon, is an individualist because it is
the individual in his detachment from society that alone can be
open-eyed and open-minded; who is qualified to carry on that "proper
business of the understanding," "to think of everything just as it is
in itself." [2] Descartes, although in habit of mind and speculative
instinct he has so little in common with the Englishman, nevertheless
finds in the individual's self-discipline and concentration the only
h