Franz Brentano

1. The invitation to lecture extended to me by the Law Society was the more binding as it gave expression in strong terms to a conviction which, unfortunately, seems on the point of falling into abeyance. Proposals for a reform of legal studies have been heard (and they are even said to have proceeded from university circles) which can only mean that the roots of jurisprudence deeply implanted as they are in the spheres of ethics and national history may be severed, without the organism itself suffering any vital injury.

As regards history, this counsel is to me, I confess, utterly inexplicable; in respect of philosophy, I can excuse it only on the ground that the men who at present occupy the chairs in the legal faculty have taken a deep and gloomy impression of the mistakes of a period which has lately passed away. A personal reproach may therefore well be spared them. Yet indeed such suggestions were every bit as wise as would be the case if a medical faculty were to propose to erase from their plan of obligatory studies zoology, physics and chemistry.

If Leibnitz in his Vita a se ipso lineata, speaking of himself, says: “I found that my earlier studies in history and philosophy lightened materially my study of law,” and if, as in his Specimen difficultatis in jure, deploring the prejudices of contemporary jurists, he exclaims: “Oh! that those who busy themselves with the study of law would throw aside their contempt of philosophy and see that without philosophy most of the questions of their jus form a labyrinth without issue!” what indeed would he say were he to rise again to-day, to these retrograde reform movements?

2. The worthy President of the Society, who has retained such a lively and wide sense of the real scientific needs of his profession, expressed to me his own special wishes respecting the theme to be chosen. The question as to the existence of a natural right was, he said, a subject which enjoyed an exceptional interest with the members of the Law Society; and he himself was anxious to learn what attitude I would adopt with regard to the views there expressed by Ihering some years ago.[1]

I consented gladly, and have therefore designated as the subject of my lecture the natural sanction for law and morality, wishing thereby, at the same time, to indicate in what sense alone I believe in a natural right.

3. For a two-fold meaning may be associated with the term “natural”:—

(1) It may mean as much as “given by nature,” “innate,” in contradistinction to what has been acquired during historical development either by deduction or by experience.

(2) It may mean, in contradistinction to what is determined by the arbitrary will of a dictator, the rules which, in and for themselves and in virtue of their nature are recognized as right and binding.

Ihering rejects natural right in either of these meanings.[2] I, for my part, agree as thoroughly with him regarding the one meaning as I differ from him regarding the other.

4. I agree completely with Ihering when, following the example of John Locke, he denies all innate moral principles.

Further, like him, I believe neither in the grotesque jus naturae, i.e. quod natura ipsa omnia animalia docuit, nor in a jus gentium, in a right which, as the Roman jurists defined it, is recognized as a natural law of reason by the universal agreement of all nations.

It is not necessary to have gone deeply into zoology and physiology in order to see that we can no longer use the animal world as a criterion for the setting up of ethical standards, even if one is not disposed to go so far as Rokitansky in pronouncing protoplasma, with its aggressive character, an unrighteous and evil principle.

As to a common code of right for all nations, such a belief was a delusion which might hold good in the antique world; in modern times when the ethnographical horizon has been extended, and the customs of barbarous races drawn upon for comparison, these laws can no longer be recognized as a product of nature, but only as a product of culture common to the more advanced nations.

As regards all this, therefore, I am in agreement with Ihering; I am also substantially in agreement with him when he asserts that there have been times without any trace of ethical knowledge and ethical feeling; at any rate without anything of the kind that was commonly accepted.

Indeed I acknowledge unhesitatingly that this state of things continued even when larger communities under state government had been constituted. When Ihering, in support of this view, points to Greek mythology with its gods and goddesses destitute of moral thought and feeling, and maintains that, by the lives of the gods, the life of mankind in the period in which these myths took shape may be interpreted,[3] he does but use a method of proof which Aristotle has already employed in a similar manner in his Politics.[4] This also must therefore be conceded him, and we shall, on this ground, no longer deny that the earliest political laws supported by penal sanction were established without the help of any feeling of right founded upon moral insight. There are, therefore, no natural moral laws and legal precepts in the sense that they are given by nature herself, that they are innate; in this respect, Ihering’s views have our entire approval.

5. We have now to meet the second and far more important question: Do there exist truths concerning morality, taught by nature herself, and is there moral truth, independent of all ecclesiastical, political, in fact every kind of social authority? Is there a natural moral law which, in its nature, is universally and incontestably valid for men of every place and time, valid indeed for every kind of thinking and sentient being; and does the knowledge of it lie within the realm of our mental faculties? Here we are at the point where I join issue with Ihering. To this question, which Ihering answers in the negative, I return a decided affirmative. Which of us is here in the right our present inquiry into the natural sanction for law and morality will, I hope, make clear.

At any rate, the decision as to the former question, whatever Ihering[5] himself may think to the contrary, does not in any way prejudge the latter. Innate prejudices do exist; these are natural in the former sense, but they lack natural sanction; whether true or false, they possess no immediate validity. On the other hand, there are many propositions recognized after a natural manner, which are incontestably certain and have universal validity for all thinking beings, which, however, as, for example, the Pythagorean theorem are anything but innate, else the blissful first discoverer had never offered his hecatomb to the god.

6. In what has been said I have made it sufficiently evident how, when I speak of natural sanction, I understand the notion of sanction. Yet it will be well to linger a moment in order to exclude another inadequate view.

“Sanction” signifies “making fast.” Now a law may be fixed in a double sense:

It is in this latter sense that sanction was spoken of by writers of antiquity, as when Cicero[6] says of the leges Porciae: “Neque quicquam praeter sanctionem attulerunt novi”; and Ulpian:[7] “Interdum in sanctionibus adijicitur, ut qui ibi aliquid commisit, capite puniatur.” It is in the former sense that the expression is more usual in modern times; a law is said to be “sanctioned” when it secures validity by receiving confirmation at the hands of the highest authority.

Manifestly sanction in the second sense presupposes sanction in the first, which sanction is the more essential, since, without it, the law would not truly be law at all. Such a natural sanction therefore is of the last necessity if anything whatever is to bear by nature the stamp of law or morality.

7. If we now compare with such a view what has been said by philosophers concerning the natural sanction for morality, it will be easily seen how often they have overlooked its essential character.

8. Many think that they have discovered a natural sanction in respect of a certain line of conduct when they have shown that a certain feeling of compulsion so to act is developed within the individual. Since every one, for example, renders services to others in order to receive similar services in return, there at last arises a habit of performing such services even in cases where there has been no thought of recompense.[8] This it is which is thought to constitute the sanction for love of our neighbour.

But this view is entirely erroneous. Such a feeling of compulsion is certainly a force driving to action, but it is assuredly not a sanction conferring validity. Besides, the inclination to vice develops according to the same law of habit, and exercises, as an impulse, the most unbounded sway. The miser’s passion which leads him, in his desire of amassing riches, to submit to the heaviest sacrifices and to commit the most extreme cruelties, certainly constitutes no sanction for his conduct.

9. Again, motives of hope or fear that a certain manner of behaviour, as, for example, regard for the general good, will render us agreeable or disagreeable to other and more powerful beings, these it has often been sought to regard as a sanction for such conduct.[9] But it is manifest that the most cringing cowardice, the most servile flattery might then boast a natural sanction. As a matter of fact virtue shines out most brightly where neither threats nor entreaties are able to divert her from the right path.

10. Some speak of an education in which man, as belonging to an order of living beings accustomed to live in society, receives from those by whom he is surrounded. An injunction is repeatedly laid upon him, the command: “You ought.” It lies in the nature of things that certain actions are very frequently and generally required of him. There is thus formed an association between his mode of action and the thought: “You ought.” And so it may happen that he may come to regard, as the source of this command, the society in which he lives, or even something vaguely conceived to be higher than an individual, that is to say, something regarded in a way as superhuman. The “ought” associated by him with such a being would then constitute the sanction of conscience.[10]

In this case the natural sanction would then consist in the naturally developed belief in the command of a more powerful will.

But it is manifest that such a belief in the command of a more powerful being contains, as yet, nothing which deserves the name of a sanction. Such a conviction is shared by one who knows himself to be at the mercy of a tyrant or of a robber horde. Whether he obey, or bid defiance, the command itself contains nothing able to give to the required act a sanction similar to that of the conscience. Even if he obey he does so through fear, not because he regards the command as one based on right.

The thought, therefore, that an act is commanded by some one does not constitute a natural sanction. In the case of every command issued by an external will the question arises: Is such a command authorized or is it not? Neither is there any reference here to a command enforced by a still higher power enjoining obedience to the former. For then the question would again reappear, and we should proceed from one command to another enjoining obedience to the former, and from that to a third enjoining in like manner obedience to the second, and so on ad infin.

Just as in the case of the feeling of compulsion, and in that of the fear or hope of recompense, so also the thought of the command of an external will cannot possibly be the sanction for law and morality.

11. But there are also commands in an essentially different sense; commands in the sense in which we speak of the commands of logic respecting our judgments and conclusions. We are not here concerned with the will of logic, since a will logic manifestly has not, nor with the will of the logician, to which we have in no way sworn allegiance. The laws of logic are naturally valid rules of judging, that is to say, we are obliged to conform to them, since conformity to these rules ensures certainty in our judgments, whereas judgments diverging from these rules are liable to error. What we therefore mean is a natural superiority which thought-processes in conformity with law have over such as are contrary to law. So also in ethics, we are not concerned with the command of an external will but rather with a natural preference similar to that in logic, and the law founded on that preference. This has been emphasized not only by Kant but also by the majority of great thinkers before him. Nevertheless there are still many—unfortunately even among the adherents of the empirical school to which I myself belong—by whom this fact has neither been rightly understood nor appreciated.

12. In what then lies this special superiority which gives to morality its natural sanction? Some regarded it as, in a sense, external, they believed its superiority to consist in beauty of appearance. The Greeks called noble and virtuous conduct ?? ?a???, the beautiful, and the perfect man of honour ?a?????a???; though none of the philosophers of antiquity set up this aesthetic view as a criterion. On the other hand, David Hume[11], among modern thinkers, has spoken of a moral sense of the beautiful which acts as arbiter between the moral and the immoral, while still more recently the German philosopher, Herbart,[12] has subordinated ethics to aesthetics.

Now I do not deny that the aspect of virtue is more agreeable than that of moral perversity. But I cannot concede that in this consists the only and essential superiority of ethical conduct. It is rather an inner superiority which distinguishes the moral from the immoral will, in the same way that it is an inner superiority which distinguishes true and self evident judgments and conclusions from prejudices and fallacies. Here also it cannot be denied that a prejudice, a fallacy has in it something unbeautiful, often indeed something ridiculously narrow-minded, which makes the person so scantily favoured by Minerva appear in a most disadvantageous attitude; yet who, on this account, would class the rules of logic among those of aesthetics, or make logic a branch of aesthetics?[13] No, the real logical superiority is no mere aesthetic appearance but a certain inward rightness which then carries with it a certain superiority of appearance. It will, therefore, be also a certain inward rightness which constitutes the essential superiority of one particular act of will over another of an opposite character; in which consists the superiority of the moral over the immoral.

The belief in this superiority is an ethical motive; the knowledge of it is the right ethical motive, the sanction which gives to ethical law permanence and validity.

13. But are we capable of attaining to such knowledge? Here lies the difficulty which philosophers have for a long time sought in vain to solve. Even to Kant it seemed as though none had found the right end of the thread by means of which to unravel the skein. This the Categorical Imperative was to do. It resembled however, rather the sword drawn by Alexander to cut the Gordian knot. With such a palpable fiction the matter is not to be set right.[14]

14. In order to gain an insight into the true origin of ethical knowledge it will be necessary to take some account of the results of later researches in the sphere of descriptive psychology. The limited time at my disposal makes it necessary for me to set forth my views very briefly, and I have reason to fear that by its conciseness the completeness of the statement may suffer. Yet it is just here that I ask your special attention, in order that what is most essential to a right understanding of the problem be not overlooked.

15. The subject of the moral and immoral is termed the will. What we will is, in many cases, a means to an end. In that case we will this end also, and even in a higher degree than the means. The end itself may often be the means to a further end; in a far reaching plan there may often appear a whole series of ends, the one being always connected in subordination to the other as a means. There must be present, however, one end, which is desired above all others and for its own sake; without this essential and final end all incentive would be lacking, and this would involve the absurdity of aiming without a goal at which to aim.

16. The means we employ in order to gain an end may be manifold, may be right or wrong. They are right when they are really adapted to the attainment of the end.

The ends, also, even the most essential and final ends, may be manifold. It is a mistake which appeared especially in the eighteenth century, nowadays the tendency is more and more to abandon it, that every one seeks the same end, namely, his own highest possible pleasure.[15] Whoever can believe that the martyr facing with full consciousness the most terrible tortures for the sake of his conviction—and there were some who had no hope of recompense hereafter—was thus inspired by a desire after the greatest possible pleasure, such a man must have either a very defective sense of the facts of the case, or, indeed, have lost all measure of the intensities of pleasure and pain.

This, therefore, is certain: even final ends are manifold, between them hovers the choice, which, since the final end is for everything the determining principle, is of the most importance. What ought I to strive after? Which end is the right one, which wrong? This, as Aristotle long ago declared, is the essential, the cardinal question in ethics.[16]

17. Which end is right, for which should our choice declare itself?

Where the end is fixed and it is merely a question as to the choice of means, we reply: Choose means which will certainly attain the end. Where it is a question as to the choice of ends we would say: Choose an end which reason regards as really attainable. This answer is, however, insufficient, many a thing attainable is rather to be shunned than sought after; choose the best among attainable ends, this alone is the adequate answer.[17]

But the answer is obscure; what do we mean by “the best”? what can be called “good” at all? and how can we attain to the knowledge that one thing is good and better than another?

18. In order to answer this question satisfactorily, we must, above all, inquire into the origin of the conception of the good, which lies, like the origin of all our conceptions, in certain concrete impressions.[18]

We possess impressions with physical content. These exhibit to us sensuous qualities localized in space. Out of this sphere arise the conceptions of colour, sound, space and many others. The conception of the good, however, has not here its origin. It is easily recognizable that the conception of the good like that of the true, which, as having affinity, is rightly placed side by side with it, derives its origin from concrete impressions with psychical content.

19. The common feature of everything psychical consists in what has been called by a very unfortunate and ambiguous term, consciousness; i.e. in a subject-attitude; in what has been termed an intentional relation to something which, though perhaps not real, is none the less an inner object of perception[19] No hearing without the heard, no believing without the believed, no hoping without the hoped for, no striving without the striven for, no joy without the enjoyed, and so with other mental phenomena.

20. The sensuous qualities which are given in our impressions with physical content exhibit manifold differences. So also do the intentional relations given in our impressions with psychical content. And, as in the former case, the number of the senses is determined by reference to those distinctions between sensuous qualities which are most fundamental (called by Helmholtz distinctions of modality), so in the latter case the number of fundamental classes of mental phenomena is fixed by reference to the most fundamental distinctions of intentional relation.[20]

In this way we distinguish three fundamental classes. Descartes in his Meditations[21] was the first to exhibit these rightly and completely; but sufficient attention has not been paid to his observations, and they were soon quite forgotten, until in recent times, and independently of him, these were again discovered. Nowadays they may lay claim to sufficient verification.[22]

The first fundamental class is that of ideas (Vorstellungen) in the widest sense of the term (Descartes’ ideae). This class embraces concrete impressions, those for example which are given to us through the senses, as well as every abstract conception.

The second fundamental class is judgment (Descartes’ judicia). Previous to Descartes these were thought of as forming, along with ideas, one fundamental class, and since Descartes’ time philosophy has fallen once more into this error. This view regarded judgment as consisting essentially in a combination or relation of ideas to one another. This was a gross misconception of its true nature. We may combine or relate ideas as we please, as in speaking of a golden mountain, the father of a hundred children, a friend of science; but as long as nothing further takes place there can be no judgment. Equally true is it that an idea always forms the basis of a judgment, as also of a desire; but it is not true that, in a judgment, there are always several ideas related to one another as subject and predicate. This is certainly the case when I say: “God is just,” though not when I say: “There is a God.”

What, therefore, distinguishes those cases where I have not only an idea but also a judgment? There is here added to the act of presentation a second intentional relation to the object given in presentation, a relation either of recognition or rejection. Whoever says: “God,” gives expression to the idea of God; whoever says: “There is a God,” gives expression to a belief in him.

I must not linger here, and can only assure you that this, if anything, admits to-day of no denial. From the philological standpoint Miklosich confirms the results of psychological analysis.[23]

The third fundamental class consists of the emotions in the widest sense of the term, from the simple forms of inclination or disinclination in respect of the mere idea, to joy and sadness arising from conviction and to the most complicated phenomena as to the choice of ends and means. Aristotle long since included these under the term ??e???. Descartes says this class embraces the voluntates sive affectus. As in the second fundamental class the intentional relation was one of recognition or rejection, so in the third class it is one of love or hate, (or, as it might be equally well expressed,) a form of pleasing or displeasing. Loving, pleasing, hating, displeasing, these are given in the simplest forms of inclination or disinclination, in victorious joy as well as in despairing sorrow, in hope and fear, and in every form of voluntary activity. “Plait-il?” asks the Frenchman; “es hat Gott gefallen,” one reads in (German) announcements of a death; while the “Placet,” written when confirming an act, is the expression of the determining fiat of will.[24]

21. In comparing these three classes of phenomena it is found that the two last mentioned show an analogy which, in the first, is absent. There exists, that is, an opposition of intentional relation; in the case of judgment, recognition or rejection, in the case of the emotions, love or hate, pleasure or displeasure. The idea shows nothing of a similar nature. I can, it is true, conceive of opposites, as for example white and black, but whether I believe in this black or deny it, I can only represent it to myself in one way; the representation does not alter with the opposite act of judgment; nor again, in the case of the feelings, when I change my attitude towards it according as it pleases or displeases me.

22. From this fact follows an important conclusion. Concerning acts of the first class none can be called either right or wrong. In the case of the second class on the other hand, one of the two opposed modes of relation, affirmation and rejection, is right the other wrong, as logic has long affirmed. The same naturally holds good of the third class. Of the two opposed modes of relation, love and hate, pleasure and displeasure, in each case one is right the other wrong.

23. We have now reached the place where the notions of good and bad, along with the notions of the true and the false which we have been seeking, have their source. We call anything true when the recognition related to it is right.[25] We call something good when the love relating to it is right. That which can be loved with a right love, that which is worthy of love, is good in the widest sense of the term.

24. Since everything which pleases does so, either for its own sake, or for the sake of something else which is thereby produced, conserved or rendered probable, we must distinguish between a primary and a secondary good, i.e. what is good in itself, and what is good on account of something else, as is specially the case in the sphere of the useful.

What is good in itself is the good in the narrower sense. It alone can stand side by side with the true. For everything which is true is true in itself, even when only mediately known. When we speak of good later we shall therefore mean, whenever the contrary is not expressly asserted, that which is good in itself.

In this way we have, I hope, made clear the notion of good.[26]

25. There follows now the still more important question: How are we to know that anything is good? Ought we to say that whatever is loved and is capable of being loved is worthy of love and is good? This is manifestly untrue, and it is almost inconceivable that some have fallen into this error. One loves what another hates, and, in accordance with a well known psychological law already previously referred to it often happens that what at first was desired merely as a means to something else, comes at last from habit to be desired for its own sake. In such a way the miser is irrationally led to heap up riches and even to sacrifice himself for their sake. The actual presence of love, therefore, by no means testifies unconditionally to the worthiness of the object to be loved, just as affirmation is no unconditional proof of what is true.

It might even be said that the first statement is even more evident than the second, since it can hardly happen that he who affirms anything at the same time holds it to be false, whereas it frequently happens that a person, even while loving something, confesses himself that it is unworthy of his love:

How then are we to know that anything is good?

26. The matter appears enigmatical, but the enigma finds a very easy solution.

As a preliminary step to answering the question, let us turn our glance from the good to the true.

Not everything which we affirm is on this account true. Our judgments are frequently quite blind. Many a prejudice which we drank in, as it were, with our mother’s milk presents to us the appearance of an irrefutable principle. To other equally blind judgments all men have, by nature, a kind of instinctive impulsion, as, for example, in trusting blindly to the so-called external impression, or to a recent remembrance. What is so recognized may often be true, but it may equally well be false since the affirming judgment contains nothing which gives to it the character of rightness.

Such, however, is the case in certain other judgments, which in contradistinction to these blind judgments may be termed “obvious,” “self-evident” judgments; as, for example, the Principle of Contradiction, and every so-called inner perception which informs me that I am now experiencing sensations of sound or colour, or think and will this or that.

In what, then, does the distinction between these lower and higher forms of judgment essentially consist? Is it a distinction in the degree of belief, or is it something else? It is not a distinction in the degree of belief; the instinctive blind assumptions arising from habit are often not in the slightest degree weakened by doubts, and we are unable to get rid of some even when we have already seen their logical falsity. But such assumptions are the results of blind impulse, they have nothing of the clearness peculiar to the higher forms of judgment. Were the question to be raised: “What is then your reason for believing that?” no rational answer would be forthcoming. It is quite true that if the same inquiry were to be made respecting the immediately evident judgment here also no reason could be given, but in face of the clearness of the judgment the inquiry would appear utterly beside the point, in fact ridiculous. Every one experiences for himself the difference between these two classes of judgment, and in the reference to this experience, consists, as in the case of every conception, the final explanation.

27. All this is, in its essentials, universally known,[27] and is contested only by a few, and then not without great inconsistency. Far fewer have noticed an analogous distinction between the higher and lower forms of the feelings of pleasure and displeasure.

Our pleasure or displeasure is often quite like blind judgment, only an instinctive or habitual impulse. This is so in the case of the miser’s pleasure in piling up, in those powerful feelings of pleasure and pain connected in men and animals alike with the appearance of certain sensuous qualities, moreover, as is especially noticeable in tastes, different species and even different individuals, are affected in a quite contrary manner.

Many philosophers, and among them very considerable thinkers, have regarded only that mode of pleasure which is peculiar to the lower phenomena of the class, and have entirely overlooked the fact that there exists a pleasure and a displeasure of a higher kind. David Hume, for example, betrays almost in every word that he has absolutely no idea of the existence of this higher class.[28] How general this oversight has been may be judged from the fact that language has no common name for it.[29] Yet the fact is undeniable and we propose now to elucidate it by a few examples.

We have already said that we are endowed by nature with a pleasure for some tastes and an antipathy for others, both of which are purely instinctive. We also naturally take pleasure in clear insight, displeasure in error or ignorance. “All men,” says Aristotle in the beautiful introductory words of his Metaphysics,[30] “naturally desire knowledge.” This desire is an example which will serve our purpose. It is a pleasure of that higher form which is analogous to self-evidence in the sphere of judgment. In our species it is universal. Were there another species which, while having different preferences from us in respect of sensible qualities, were opposed to us in loving error for its own sake and hating insight, then assuredly we should not in the latter as in the former case say: that it was a matter of taste, “de gustibus non est disputandum”; rather we should here answer decisively that such love and hatred were fundamentally absurd, that such a species hated what was undeniably good, and loved what was undeniably bad in itself. Now why, where the feeling of compulsion is equally strong, do we answer differently in the one case than in the other? The answer is simple. In the former case the feeling of compulsion was an instinctive impulse; in the latter the natural feeling of pleasure is a higher love, having the character of rightness.[31] We therefore notice when we ourselves have such a feeling, that its object is not merely loved and lovable, its opposite hated and unlovable, but also that the one is worthy of love, the other worthy of hatred, and therefore that one is good, the other bad.

Another example. As we prefer insight to error, so also, generally speaking, we prefer joy (unless indeed it be joy in what is bad) to sadness. Were there beings among whom the reverse held good, we should regard such conduct as perverse, and rightly so. Here too it is because our love and our hatred are qualified as right.

A third example is found in feeling itself so far as it is right and has the character of rightness. As was the case with the rightness and evidence of the judgment, so also the rightness and higher character of the feelings are also reckoned as good, while love of the bad is itself bad.[32]

In order that, in the sphere of ideas, we may not leave the corresponding experiences unmentioned: here in the same way every idea is found to be something good in itself, and that with every enlargement in the realm of our ideas, quite apart from what of good or bad may result therefrom, the good within us is increased.[33]

Here then, and from such experiences of love qualified as right, arises within us the knowledge that anything is truly and unmistakably good in the full extent to which we are capable of such knowledge.[34]

This last clause is added advisedly; for we must not, of course, conceal from ourselves the fact that we have no guarantee that everything which is good will arouse within us a love with the character of rightness. Wherever this is not the case our criterion fails, and the good then, so far as our knowledge and practical account of it are concerned, is as much as non-existent.[35]

28. It is, however, not one but many things which we thus recognize as good. And so the questions remain: In that which is good, and especially in what, as good, is attainable, which is the better? and further, which is the highest practical good? so that it may become the standard for our actions.

29. We must first inquire: When is anything better than anything else and recognized by us as better? and what is meant by “the better” at all?

The answer now lies ready to hand though not in such a way as to render it unnecessary to exclude a very possible error. If by “good” is meant that which is worthy of being loved for its own sake, then by “better” appears to be meant that which is worthy of being loved with a greater love. But is this really so? What is meant by “with greater love”? Is it spatial magnitude? Hardly; no one would propose to measure pleasure or displeasure in feet and inches. “The intensity of the pleasure,” some will perhaps say, “is what is meant in speaking of love as great.” According to this “better” would mean that which pleases with a more intense pleasure. But such a definition closely examined would involve the greatest absurdities. According to this view, each single case in which joy is felt in anything would seem only to admit of a certain measure of joy, whereas one would naturally think that it could not possibly be reprehensible to rejoice in what is really good to the fullest extent possible. Or, as we say, “with all one’s heart.” Descartes has already observed that the act of loving (when directed towards what is good at all) can never be too intense.[36] And he is manifestly right. Were it otherwise what cautiousness should we not be called upon to exercise considering the limits of our mental strength! Every time one wished to rejoice over something good, an anxious survey would be necessary respecting other existing goods in order that the measure of proportion to our total strength might in no way be exceeded. And if one believes in a God, understanding thereby the Infinite Good, the Ideal of all ideals, then, since a man, even with his whole soul and strength can only love God with an act of love of finite intensity he will therefore be compelled to love every other good with an infinitely small degree of intensity, and, since this is impossible, must cease as a matter of fact to love it at all.

All this is manifestly absurd.

30. And yet it must be said that the better is that which is rightly loved with a greater love, which is rightly more pleasing, though in quite another sense. The “more” refers not to the relation of intensity between the two acts, but rather to a peculiar species of phenomena belonging to the general class of pleasure and displeasure, i.e., to the phenomena of choice. Thereby are meant relating acts which in their peculiar nature are known to every one in experience. In the province of ideas there is nothing analogous. In the province of judgment there are, it is true, alongside the simple, subjectless propositions, predicative judgments which are acts of a relative character, but this resemblance is very imperfect. The case here which has most similarity is that of a decision respecting a dialectically propounded question: “Is this true or false?” in which a sort of preference is given to one above the other. But even here it is always something true which is, so to speak, preferred to something false, never something more true over something less true. Whatever is true is true in a like degree, but whatever is good is not good in equal degree, and by “better” nothing else is meant than what, when compared with another good, is preferable, i.e. something which for its own sake, is preferred with a right preference. For the rest a somewhat wider usage of language allows us also to speak of a good as “better” over against a bad or purely indifferent, or even to call something bad over against something still worse “the better.” We then say not of course that it is good, but still better than the other.

This shortly in explanation of the notion of the better.

31. Next the question: How do we know that anything is really the better? Assuming the existence of simple knowledge of things as good and bad, we appear, so analogy suggests, to derive this insight from certain acts of preferring which have the character of rightness. For, like the simple exercise of pleasure, so also the act of preferring is sometimes of a lower or impulsive, and sometimes of a higher kind, and like the evident judgment, is qualified as right. The cases in point are, however, of such a nature that many might say, and perhaps with a better right, that it is analytical judgments which furnish us here with the means of progress, and that instead of our learning the preferability from the actual preferences, the preferences have the qualification of rightness because they already presume the recognition of the standard of preferability.[37]

Chiefly belonging to this class are obviously (1) the case where we prefer something good, and recognized as good, to something bad, and recognized as bad. Also (2) the case where we prefer the existence of something recognized as good to its non-existence, or the non-existence of something recognized as bad to its existence.

This case embraces in itself a series of important cases, as the case where we prefer a good to the same good with an admixture of the bad; and, on the other hand, where we prefer something bad, with an admixture of good, to the same bad purely for its own sake. Further, the cases in which we prefer the whole of a good to its part, and again, the part of something bad to its whole. Aristotle has already called attention to the fact that in the case of the good the sum is always better than the separate parts which together make up its sum. Such a case of summation presents itself wherever a state has a certain permanence. The same amount of joy which endures an hour is better than if it only lasted for a moment. Whoever denies this, like Epicurus when he would console us on account of the mortality of the soul, may easily be led into still more striking absurdities. For then an hour’s torture would be no worse than that of a moment. And, by combining both these propositions, we should have to assume that an entire life full of joy with a single moment of pain is in no way preferable to an entire life full of pain with a single moment of joy. This is a result at which not only every sound mind in general would demur, but also one respecting which Epicurus in particular, expressly asserts the contrary.

Closely related to this is the case (3) where one good is preferred to another, which, while forming no part of the first, is yet similar in every respect to one of its parts. It is not merely by adding a good to the same good but also by adding it to a good which is in every respect similar that we get a better for total. The case is analogous when to a similar bad another bad is thought of as added. When therefore, for example, a fine picture is seen, the first time as a whole, the second time only partially though exactly in the same way, we must then say that the first view, considered in itself, is better: Or, when one imagines something that is good and a second time not only imagines it even as perfectly as before, but also loves it, this latter sum of psychical acts is then something better.

Cases of difference in degree belong also to this third class, and are especially worthy of mention. If one good, e.g. one joy is in every respect quite equal to another, only more intense, then the preference which is given to the more intense is qualified as right, the more intense is the better. Conversely, the bad which is more intense, e.g. a more intense pain, is worse. That is to say: the degree of intensity corresponds with the distance from the zero point, and the distance of the greater degree of intensity from zero is compounded of its distance from the weaker degree of intensity plus the distance of this from zero. We have, therefore, really to do with a kind of addition, a view which has been disputed.

32. Many a one will, perhaps, think to himself that the three cases which I have set forth are so self-evident and insignificant that it is a matter for surprise that I have lingered over them at all. Self-evident they are of course, and this must be so, since we have here to do with what has to serve as a fundamentum. The case would be worse if they were insignificant; for, I confess it frankly, I have scarcely another further case to add: in all, or, at any rate, most of the cases not here included a criterion fails us completely.[38]

An example. All insight is, we have said, something good in itself, and all noble love is likewise something good in itself. We recognize both these things clearly. But who shall say whether this act of insight or that act of love is in itself, the better? There have, of course, not been wanting those who have given a verdict on this point; some have even asserted that it is certain every act of noble love for its own sake is a good so high that, taken by itself, it is better than all scientific insight taken together. In my judgment this view is not only doubtful but altogether absurd. For a single act of noble love worthy as it is, is yet a certain finite good. But every act of insight is also a finite good and if I keep adding this finite quantity to itself ad libitum, its sum is bound some time to exceed every given finite measure of good. On the other hand, Plato and Aristotle were inclined to regard the act of knowing considered in itself as higher than ethically virtuous acts, this also quite unjustly, and I only mention it since the opposition of opinions here is a confirmatory proof of the absence of any criterion. As often happens in the sphere of the psychical,[39] so also here, real measurements are impossible. Now where the inner preference is not to be detected there holds good here what was said in a similar case of simple goodness—as far as our knowledge and practical concern go it is as good as non-existent.

33. There are some who, in opposition to the clear teaching of experience, assert that only pleasure is good for its own sake, and pleasure is the good. Assuming this view to be right, would it have the advantage, as many have believed, and as Bentham in particular maintained in its favour,[40] that we should at once attain to a determination of the relative value of goods, seeing that now we should have only homogeneous goods and these admit of being measured side by side? Every more intense pleasure would then be a greater good than one less intense, and a good having double the intensity would be equal to two of half the intensity. In this way everything would become clear.

A moment’s reflection only is needed to shatter an illusion born of such hope. Are we really able to find out that one pleasure is twice as great as another? Gauss[41] himself, who knew something about measurements, has denied this. A more intense pleasure is never really made up of twelve less intense pleasures distinguishable as equal parts within it, as a foot is made up of twelve inches. So the matter presents itself even in simpler cases. But how foolish would any one appear were he to assert that the pleasure he had in smoking a good cigar increased 127, or, let us say, 1077 times in intensity yielded a measure of the pleasure experienced by him in listening to a symphony of Beethoven or contemplating one of Raphael’s madonnas![42] I think I have said enough, and do not need to allude to the further difficulty involved in comparing the intensity of pleasure with that of pain.

34. Only therefore to this very limited extent are we able to derive from experience a knowledge of what is better in itself.

I can well understand how any one, reflecting upon this for the first time, will be led to fear that the great gaps which remain must, in practice, prove in the highest degree embarrassing. Yet as we proceed and make a vigorous use of what we do possess, we shall find that the most sensible deficiencies may fortunately turn out harmless in practice.

35. For, from the cases we adduced of preference qualified as right, the important proposition follows that the province of the highest practical good embraces everything which is subject to our rational operation in so far as a good can be realized in such matter. Not merely the self but also the family, the town, the state, the whole present world of life, even distant future times, may here be taken into account. All this follows from the principle of the summation of the good. To promote as far as possible the good throughout this great whole, that is manifestly the right end in life, towards which every act is to be ordered; that is the one, the highest command upon which all the rest depend.[43] Self-devotion and, on occasion, self-sacrifice are, therefore, duties; an equal good wherever it be, and therefore in the person of another also, is, in proportion to its value, and, therefore, everywhere equally to be loved, and jealousy and malignant envy are excluded.

36. And now, since all lesser goods are to be made subservient to the good of this widest sphere, light may also be shed from utilitarian considerations upon those dark regions where before we found a standard of choice wanting. If, for example, it was true that acts of insight and acts of noble love are not to be measured as to their inner worth in terms of one another, it is now clear that at any rate neither of these two sides may be entirely neglected at the expense of the other. If one person had perfect knowledge without noble love, and another perfect noble love without knowledge, neither would be able to use his gifts in the service of the still greater collective good. A certain harmonious development and exercise of all our noblest powers seems, therefore, from this point of view to be, at any rate, what we must strive after.[44]

37. And now after seeing how many duties of love towards the highest practical good come to light, we proceed to the origin of duties of law. That association which renders possible a division of labour is the indispensable condition of the advancement of the highest good as we have learnt to understand it. Man therefore is morally destined to live in society, and it is easily demonstrable that limits must exist in order that one member of society may not be more of a hindrance than a help to another,[45] and that these limits (though much in this respect is settled by considerations of natural common-sense) require to be more exactly marked by positive laws, and need the further security and support of public authority.

And while in this way our natural insight demands and sanctions positive law in general, it may, in particular, raise demands on the fulfillment of which depends the measure of the blessing which the state of law is to bring with it.

In this way does truth, bearing the supreme crown, give, or refuse, to the products of positive legislation its sanction, and it is from this crown that they derive their true binding force.[46] For as the old sage of Ephesus says in one of his pregnant Sibyl-like utterances: “All human laws are fed from the one divine law.”[47]

38. Besides the laws referring to the limits of right, in every society there are other positive enactments as to the way in which an individual is to act inside his own sphere of right, how he is to make use of his liberty and his property. Public opinion approves industry, generosity, and economy each in its place, while disapproving idleness, greed, prodigality and much else. In the statutes no such laws are to be found, but they stand written within the hearts of the people. Nor are reward and punishment lacking as regards this kind of positive law. These consist in the advantages and disadvantages of good and bad reputation. There exists here, as it were, a positive code of morality, the complement of the positive code of law. This positive code of morality also may contain both right and wrong enactments. To be truly binding they need to be in accord with the rules which, as we have already seen, are capable of recognition by the reason, as a duty of love towards the highest practical good.

And so we have really found the natural sanction of morality which we sought.

39. I do not linger here to show how this sanction operates. Every one would rather say to himself: “I am acting rightly,” than “I am acting foolishly.” And to no one capable of recognizing what is better is this fact entirely indifferent in choosing. In the case of some it is nearly so, whereas for others it is of the very first importance. Innate dispositions are themselves diverse and much advance may be made by education and one’s own ethical conduct. Enough, truth speaks, and whoever is of the truth hears her voice.

40. Throughout the multiplicity of derived laws graven by nature herself upon the tables of the law, utilitarian considerations, as we have seen, form the standard. As now, in different situations, we resort to different means, so also with regard to these different situations different special precepts must hold good. They may be quite conflicting in their tenour without of course being really contradictory, since they are intended for different circumstances. In this sense, then, a relativity in ethics is rightly asserted.

Ihering has drawn attention to this,[48] but he is not as he seems to think, one of the first. On the contrary the doctrine was known of old and is insisted upon by Plato in his Republic.[49] Aristotle in his Ethics, and with special emphasis in his Politics has affirmed it.[50] The scholastic philosophers also held fast to the doctrine, and in modern times men even of such energetic ethical and political convictions as Bentham[51] have not denied it. If the fanatics of the French Revolution failed to recognize it, still the clear-headed among their fellow-citizens, even in that time, did not fall into such a delusion. Laplace, for example, in his Essai philosophique sur les probabilitÉs occasionally bears witness to the true teaching and raises his voice in warning.[52]

Thus it happens that the distinguished investigator who has disclosed to us the spirit of Roman law and to whom, as the author of Der Zweck im Recht, we also are bound in many respects to tender our thanks, has yet here, as we see, done nothing else than render the doctrine unclear by confounding it with an essentially different and false doctrine of relativity. According to this doctrine, no proposition in ethics, not even the proposition that the best in the widest sphere ought to be the determining standard of action, would have unexceptional validity. In primitive times and even later, throughout long centuries, such a procedure would, he expressly says, have been as immoral as, in later times, the opposite conduct. We must, he thinks, on looking back into the times of cannibalism sympathize rather with the cannibals, and not with those who perhaps, in advance of their time, preached even then the universal love of neighbour.[53] These are errors which have been crushingly refuted not merely by philosophical reflection upon the fundamental principles of ethics, but also by the successes of Christian missionaries.

41. Thus the road leading to the goal which we set before us has been traversed. For a time it led us through strange and rarely trodden districts, finally, however, the results at which we have arrived smile upon us like old acquaintances. In declaring love of neighbour and self-sacrifice, both for our country and for mankind to be duties, we are only echoing what is proclaimed all around us. We should also find by going further into particulars that lying, treachery, murder, debauchery and much besides that is held to be morally base are, measured by the standard of the principles we have set up, condemned, one as unjust, another as immoral.

All this would seem, in a measure, familiar to us as the shores of his native land to the sea-farer when, after a voyage happily consummated, he sees them rise suddenly into view, and the smoke curling from the old familiar chimney.

42. And certainly we are at liberty to rejoice over this. The absolute clearness with which all this follows is good omen for the success of our undertaking, since it is the method by which we arrived at our result, which is obviously the most essential feature in it. Without it what advantage can our inquiry be said to have over that of others? Even Kant, for example, whose doctrines concerning the principles of ethics were quite different, arrived, in the further course of his statement, pretty much to the popular view. But what we miss in him is strict logical coherence. Beneke has shown that the Categorical Imperative as Kant used it, may be so employed as to prove, in the same case, contradictory statements and so everything and nothing.[54] If, none the less, Kant is able to arrive so often at right conclusions, this must be attributed to the fact that from the outset he had harboured such opinions. Even Hegel, had he not known in other ways that the sky was blue, would certainly never have succeeded by means of his dialectic in deducing this À priori. Did he not equally succeed in demonstrating that there were seven planets, a number accepted in his day, but which in our time science has long left behind?

The causes of this phenomenon, therefore, are easily understood.

43. But there is another point which appears enigmatical. How does it happen that the prevailing public opinion respecting law and morality is itself, in so many respects, obviously right? If a thinker like Kant was unable to discover the sources from which ethical knowledge flows, how can we believe that the common folk succeeded in drawing therefrom? And if this were not the case, how were they able, while ignorant of the premises, still to reach the conclusions? Here the phenomenon cannot possibly be explained from the fact that the right view was long before established.

This difficulty also resolves itself in a very simple manner when we reflect that much in our store of knowledge exists, and contributes towards the attainment of new knowledge, without the knowledge of the process itself being clearly present to consciousness.

It must not be supposed that in saying this I am an adherent of the wonderful philosophy of the unconscious. I am speaking here only of undeniable and well known truths. Thus it has often been observed that for thousands of years men have drawn right conclusions without bringing the procedure and the principles which form the condition of the formal validity of the inference into clear consciousness by means of reflection. Indeed when Plato first took the step of reflecting upon it, he was led to set up an entirely false theory which assumed that every inference was a process of reminiscence.[55] What was perceived and experienced on earth recalled to the memory knowledge acquired in a pre-mundane existence. Nowadays this error has disappeared. Still, false theories concerning the fundamental principles of syllogism are continually emerging, as, for example, when Albert Lange,[56] finds them in space-perceptions and in synthetic propositions À priori, or Alexander Bain[57] in the experience that the moods Barbara, Celarent, etc., have up to the present time been found to be valid in every case: mere crude errors which overlook the immediate intuitions forming the conditions of right conclusions, but which do not prevent Plato, Lange, and Bain from arguing in general exactly like other people. In spite of their false conception of the true fundamental principles, these still continue to operate in their reasoning.

But why do I go so far for examples? Let the experiment be made with the first “plain man” who has just drawn a right conclusion, and demand of him that he give you the premises of his conclusion. This he will usually be unable to do and may perhaps make entirely false statements about it. On requiring the same man to define a notion with which he is familiar, he will make the most glaring mistakes and so show once again that he is not able rightly to describe his own thinking.

44. Meantime, however dark the road to ethical knowledge might appear, both to the “plain man” and to the philosopher, we must still expect, since the process is a complicated one and many combined principles operate therein, that the traces of the operation of each separate principle will be evident in history, and this fact, even more than agreement in respect of the final results, is a confirmation of the right theory.

This also, if only the time permitted, in what fulness would I not be able to lay before you! Who is there, for example, who would not, as we have done, regard joy as something evidently good in itself, if only it were not joy in what is bad. Nor has there been any lack of writers on ethics who have asserted that pleasure and the good were strictly identical conceptions.[58] Opposed to these were others who bore witness to the inner worth of insight and such will be supported by all unprejudiced minds. Many philosophers have wished to exalt knowledge above all else as the highest good.[59] They recognized, however, at the same time, a certain inner worth in each act of virtue, while others have carried this view so far as to recognize only in virtuous action the highest good.[60]

On the one hand, therefore, we have had sufficient confirmatory tests in support of our view.

Next with regard to the principles of choice, how often do we not see the principle of summation applied as, for example, when it is said that the measure of the happiness of life as a whole and not that of the passing moment is to be considered.[61] And, again, passing beyond the limits of the self, when, for example, Aristotle says, that the happiness of a nation seems to be a higher end than that of an individual happiness,[62] and that in the same way in a work of art, or in an organism and similarly in the case of the family, the part always exists for the sake of the whole; everything is here subordinate to the “common” (“e?? t? ??????”).[63] Even in the case of the whole creation he makes the same principle hold good. “In what,” he asks,[64] “regarding all created things consists the good, and the best, which is its final aim”? Is it immanent or transcendent? And he answers: “Both,” setting forth as the transcendent aim the divine first cause, likeness to which everything strives after, while the immanent aim is the world-order as a whole. The like testimony to the principle of summation might be taken from the lips of the Stoics.[65] It reappears in every attempt to construct a theodicy from Plato down to Leibnitz and even later.[66]

In the precepts of our popular religion, again, the operation of this principle is also distinctly visible. When it ordains us to love our neighbour as ourselves, what else is taught but that, in the right choice, equality (be it our own or that of others) shall fall with equal weight into the balance, from which follows the subordination of the single individual to the good of the collective whole; just as the ethical ideal of Christianity—the Saviour—offers himself as a sacrifice for the salvation of the world.

And when it is said: “Love God above all else” (and Aristotle also says that God is much rather to be called the best than the world as a whole),[67] here also there is a special application of the law of summation. For how else do we think of God than as the sum of all that is good raised to an infinite degree?

And so the two propositions: that we should love our neighbour as ourselves, and love God above all else, are manifestly so closely related that we are no longer surprised to find added the words that the one law is like unto the other. The law that we are to love our neighbour, it should be carefully noted, is not subordinated to that of love of God, and derived from it, it is, according to the Christian view, not right because God has required it, rather he requires it because it is by nature right;[68] and this rightness is made manifest in the same way, and with the same clearness by means, so to speak, of the same ray of natural knowledge.

Sufficient testimony has perhaps been offered to the shaping operation of those factors which have been separately set forth by us, and so we have, on the one hand, a strengthening of our theory while, on the other hand, we have in essentials the explanation of that paradoxical anticipation of philosophical results.

45. We are not to suppose, however, that all has now been said. Not every opinion regarding law and morality holding good in society to-day, and which has also the sanction of ethics, flows from these pure and noble sources which, even when hid, have none the less discharged their waters in rich abundance. Many such views have arisen in a way quite unjustifiable from a logical point of view, and an inquiry into the history of their origin shows that they take their rise in lower impulses, in egoistic desires through a transformation due, not to higher influences, but simply to the instinctive force of habit. It is really true, as so many utilitarians have pointed out, that egoism prompts men to make themselves agreeable to others and that such conduct continually practised, develops finally into a habit which is blind to the original ends. The chief reason for this is the limits of our mind, the so-called “narrowness of consciousness,” which does not allow of our always keeping clearly before us the more remote and final ends side by side with what is immediately in question. In such a way many a one may be frequently led, by the blind force of habit, to have regard also for the well-being of others with a certain self-forgetfulness. Further, it is true, as some have particularly insisted, that in history it must often have happened that a powerful person has selfishly reduced to subjection a weaker individual, and transformed him by force of habit more and more into a willing slave. And then in this slave-soul an a?t?? ?fa comes in the end to operate with a blind, but none the less powerful force, an impelling “you ought,” as though it were a revelation of nature regarding good and bad. On every violation of a command he feels himself, like a well-trained dog, uneasy and inwardly tormented. When such a tyrant had, in this way, reduced many to subjection his prudent egoism would cause him to give commands helpful to the maintenance of his horde. These orders would in the same slavish manner become habitual, and as it were, natural to his subjects. And so regard for the whole of this community would gradually become for each subject something into which he felt himself driven in the manner above described. At the same time, we may easily recognize how, owing to the constant care exercised towards his subjects, habits must be formed in the tyrant himself favourable to a regard for the welfare of the community. It may even happen at last that, just as in the case of the miser, who sacrifices himself for the sake of his gold, the tyrant may be ready to die for the maintenance of his people. Throughout the whole process thus described ethical principles do not exercise the slightest influence. The compulsion which in this way arises, and the opinions which as a result approve or disapprove of a certain procedure have nothing whatever to do with the natural sanction and are devoid of all ethical worth. It may, however, be easily understood—especially if one considers how one tribe enters into relations with another and considerations of friendliness begin here too to prove advantageous,—how this kind of training may lead, indeed one may venture to say must, sooner or later, lead to opinions in agreement with the principles springing from a true appreciation of the good.

46. Thus also the blind, purely habitual expectation of similar events under similar circumstances which animals, and also we ourselves, practise in countless instances, often coincide with the results which a complete induction according to the principles of the calculation of probability would, in the same case, have brought about. The very similarity of result has led people even with a psychological education,[69] to regard the two processes as exactly identical, although they stand wide as the poles asunder, the one completing itself by means of a purely blind instinct, while the other is illumined by mathematical evidence. We ourselves should, therefore, be well on our guard against supposing in such pseudo-ethical developments the concealed influence of the true ethical sanction.

47. Great, however, as is the contrast, still even these lower processes have their worth. Nature—and this has been often insisted on[70]—frequently does well in leaving much which concerns our welfare to instinctive impulses like hunger and thirst rather than leave everything to our reason. This, also, is confirmed in our case.

In those very early times in which, as I conceded to Ihering, (why you will, perhaps, now be better able to see,) nearly every trace of ethical thought and feeling was absent, much nevertheless was done which was a preparation for true virtue. Public laws, however much in the first instance established under the influence of lower motives, were yet preliminary conditions for the free unfolding of our noblest capacities.

Nor is it a matter of no consequence that, under the influence of this training, certain passions became moderated and certain dispositions implanted which made it easier to follow the true moral law in the same direction. Catiline’s courage was assuredly not the true virtue of courage if Aristotle is right when he says that they only have such who go to danger and to death “t?? ?a??? ??e?a,” “for the sake of the morally beautiful.”[71] Augustine might have made use of this instance when he said: “virtutes ethnicorum splendida vitia.” But who will deny that if such a man as Catiline had been converted, the dispositions he had acquired earlier would have made it easier for him to venture to extremes in the service of the good too? In this way, the ground was made receptive for the admission of truly ethical impulses and therein lay a powerful encouragement to the propagation of truth on the part of those who were foremost in the discovery of ethical knowledge, and first to hear the voice of a natural sanction. It is in this sense that Aristotle observed that it is not every one who can study ethics. He who is to hear about law and morality, must be already well conducted by dint of habit. In the case of others, he thinks, it is but a waste of pains.[72]

Indeed, still more may be said in praise of the services rendered to the recognition of natural law and morality by these pre-ethical, though not pre-historical, times. The legal ordinances and customs formed in this time, owing to the reasons previously assigned, approached so closely to what ethics demands, that this peculiar kind of mimicry blinded many to the absence of a more thorough going affinity. What, in the one case, a blind impulse and in the other, knowledge of the good exalts into a law, is often completely the same in substance. The legislative moral authority found therefore in these already codified laws and customs the rough drafts, as it were, of laws, which with a few changes, it could sanction without more ado. These were the more valuable because, as seems required from a utilitarian point of view, they were adapted to the special circumstances of the people. A comparison of the one constitution with the other made this noticeable, and early helped to lead to the important knowledge of the real relativity of natural right and of natural morality. Who knows whether otherwise, it would have been possible, even for an Aristotle, to succeed to the degree in which he did in steering clear of all cut and dried doctrinaire theories?

So much, therefore, concerning the pre-ethical times, in order that these may not be denied the acknowledgment which they deserve.

48. Nevertheless it was then night; though a night which heralded the coming day, and the dawn of that day witnessed assuredly the most glorious sunrise which, in the history of the world is yet to rise into full splendour. I say, is to rise, not has risen, for we still see the light struggling with the powers of darkness. True ethical motives, in private as in public life, are still far from being everywhere the determining standard. These forces—to use the language of the poet[A]—prove themselves still too little developed to hold together the structure of the world; and so nature,—and we have need to be thankful that it is so—keeps the machine going by hunger and love, and, we must also add, by all those other dark strivings which, as we have seen, may be developed from self-seeking desires.

49. Of these, and their psychological laws the jurist must, therefore, if he would truly understand his time, and influence it beneficially, take cognizance, as well as of the doctrines of natural right and natural morality which our inquiry has shown to be not the first but—in so far as hope in the realization of a complete ideal may be cherished at all—will be the last in the history of the development of law and morality.

Thus the near relationships of jurisprudence and politics of which Leibnitz spoke, become evident in their full range.

Plato has said: “It will never be well with the state until the true philosopher is king, or kings philosophize rightly.” In our constitutional times we should express ourselves better by saying that there will never be a change for the better regarding the many evils in our national life until the authorities, instead of abolishing the limited philosophical culture required for law students by the existing regulations, shall rather strive hard to secure that for their noble profession they shall really receive an adequate philosophical culture.