morality is more than the
story of its vicissitudes, of its gradual, painful development from the
pre-historic times to our own.

What, then, is morality _in se_ apart from its history? It is, as
asserted, that universal law, obligatory on all rational beings in
virtue of their rationality, binding them to live for the right. The
_instinct_ of humanity is with us, that instinct which commands a man
to live for the right, and instinct does not err. Just as we
instinctively recognise a righteous retribution in the downfall of the
wrong-doer and feel outraged when he prospers, even temporarily, in his
wickedness, so we equally apprehend by an immediate intuition that what
is recognised as the good ought to be obeyed, and loyally obeyed, by a
man. _Fais ce que tu dois: Advienne que pourra_, is the expression of
this faith that is in humanity, and I cannot conceive how any ethical
philosopher can venture to contest its truth, no matter what his test
of morality may speculatively be.

And, now, we may point out what we conceive to be the significance, the
implication of the facts just set forth. If we are to think about the
matter at all, if we are not to adopt a Positivist attitude and
absolutely bar metaphysic as a sterile and unprofitable investigation,
it seems to me that the moral law, like all law, points unmistakably to
reason as its source; and since, as already pointed out, man does not
create the moral order in which he lives any more than he creates the
mathematical or chemical laws which he uses, but simply discovers them
by observation, the moral law must be the expression of a mind other
than man's. When we say "other than man's," we do not mean
specifically, but individually, for we hold the specific oneness of all
mind in all intelligent creatures from first to last. We mean, the
moral law is an expression of the "Mind which is the Whole," the Mind
which is the Infinite, so that, just as Mr. Spencer refers everything
ultimately--and in this he is "not far from the kingdom of God"--to an
"Infinite and Everlasting Power," we refer everything, the moral law
above all, which to us is the highest expression of the Divine known to
this earth, to an Infinite and Everlasting Mind, the Soul of the World,
the Soul of all souls, the inexhaustible Intelligence upon whose
treasury I am drawing now as I think and write, upon whose stores all
creatures are drawing in every intelligent action of their lives.

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