The review of theories in the last chapter prepares us to apprehend the real ground of right. All the subjective theories fail, because the moral quality is objectively real to the percipient conscience. The endÆmonistic and utilitarian explanations are at fault, because they attempt to deduce the moral from the unmoral and can give no account of the unique authority which is the characteristic mark of moral law.

The full ground of right, as the essential elements of the problem have made clearly apparent, must be regarded as twofold, embracing, first, the proximate or immediate ground, and secondly, the ultimate ground.

I. The proximate ground—as becomes easily manifest if we keep our view close to the witness of consciousness in actual experience—is in a rational conformity of conduct to the relations which men sustain to one another and to other beings in the divinely constituted system of the world. These relations immediately call for fitting conduct. They create the ought of moral law. The right is found in conforming to the requirements which they develop and impose. Duty consists in fulfilling the demands which they involve and express to the moral reason. This, it will be noticed, accords with the fundamental principle already referred to, that the conception of moral law allies itself normally only with the theistic view of the world, and the truth that the constituted human relations have been framed under a rational ideal of order and welfare. These relations form a rational system in which intelligent free activity is to actualize a divine plan of excellence and well-being. They require conduct in accordance with themselves and with the ends of well-being and happiness to which they have been adapted. The human reason reads the meaning of the relations, and the moral discernment recognizes the obligation to correspondent sentiment and action. Moral conduct thus becomes simply the conduct that actualizes the ideas of divine order to which the framework of human relations has been constituted. What is right springs immediately from the relations, as what is due in ideal moral order. The relations themselves exhibit a moral constitution as the immediate environment of the human moral personality. They bring the ethical requirement which they contain to the recognizing capacity of the reason and the obedience of the will.

It is to be noticed, further, that the term "relations" is to be understood here in its most comprehensive sense and applicability. It embraces all relations with respect to which the human personality in its freedom has to determine and harmonize itself—relations individual, social, and divine. Social relationship has often been absurdly mistaken as the only sphere of moral obligation; and the individual, if contemplated as alone and perfectly isolated, has sometimes been supposed to be entirely without ethical bonds. In what concerns himself only, he is imagined to be unbound. But this is an unwarrantable limitation of the term. For the individual, even viewed utterly apart from his race, yet sustains relations to the adaptations and intentions in his own nature. As in society he owes something to the humanity around him, even alone he would still owe something to the humanity committed to his own keeping. He cannot absolve himself from the bond that binds him to that—as in fact he cannot from that which unites him to his fellow-men. Mere pleasures or enjoyments which are apart from his essential character he may, indeed, disregard, but not what concerns its intended excellence and honor. It has been well said: "Robinson Crusoe did not become a non-moral being when thrown on the desert island; for he still owed respect to his own humanity."59 Many a deed is wrong, not as injuring others, but as violative of the agent's relation to the purposes lodged in his own constitution. This is as real as are those that connect him with his fellow-men around him or with God above him. And it is very superficial thought that finds no relations but those that are objective. Sometimes, strangely, in popular thinking, man's relation to God is also omitted from a place in morality, by a relegation of it to the sphere of religion. But this relation is the most fundamental and vital of all human relations and most replete with moral obligations and responsibilities. This view of the immediate ground of right is fully established by the following additional considerations:

1. It is directly sustained by the moral consciousness itself, in constant experience. As a question of psychological metaphysics the point must be settled in harmony with the testimony of consciousness. Appealing to this, there can be no doubt that these relations do develop and call for the duties which the conscience is constantly discerning and enforcing. This is simply a fact—a fact which speculations about the origin of conscience or the education of its judgments, must not be allowed to obscure. It assures that actual morality is no abstraction, but concrete conduct rightly answering to each person's relations in real life. Beyond all question, as thus witnessed in the universal moral consciousness, these relations from the most general, that of man to man, down through all special connections, as between parents and children, husband and wife, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, rulers and citizens, employer and employÉ, rich and poor, capable and helpless, and all the other human interrelations in their thousands of diversified forms, do determine and impose both general and specific duties. The duties come into view as developed by the relations, and change as they are modified and changed. This basing of what is right and obligatory for men on their relations to one another, to God, and to appointed ends, is not a mere theory, but an unquestionable reality in their consciousness.

And this accords with the best cosmic philosophy. For this holds all these relations as parts of a rationally designed system of world-order for universal well-being, and the moral reason as capacitated to discern, with more or less clearness and fulness, the moral requirement which they involve and present for observance. We know of no morality that exists, or can exist, in human life, apart from them. Strike them all away, and all duties disappear. Take, as illustration, the most generic virtue of all the virtues recognized by the ethical judgments, that of good-will or love. The moral reason recognizes this as resting, according to eternal fitness, in the broadest and most generic of all relations, that of one intelligent sentient being to another. In the inter-human connection it is based in the brotherhood of man. And this generic good-will, thus required in ideal moral right by the generic relation, becomes differentiated and modified in thousands of special types and forms by the endlessly diversified particular relations of life.

2. It is implied in the logical presuppositions to all moral responsibility. Among such presuppositions, as conceded by all, are intelligence to know, and freedom to conform to these relations. These prerequisites are essential to the very conception of moral action and amenability. It is the universal sense of the race that creatures that cannot know themselves and the relations they sustain, and are without free-will to fulfil them, are morally irresponsible and incapable of virtue or vice. To them the moral realm becomes a blank, and the moral judgments become impossible. And equally universal is the admission that the moral insight is helped and responsibility increased by every increase of light giving larger and truer knowledge of the complex and intricate connections of human life. With every broadened and clarified vision of these connections fresh obligations appear. "A defective apprehension of the relations in which we stand to God and to our fellow-men, will prevent our seeing our specific duties."60 This fact furnishes direct evidence that right conduct must be held as a certain intelligent adjustment to the relations sustained.

The value of this point is magnified when we remind ourselves how it explains and illuminates the sometimes troublesome phenomenon of different and even conflicting moral judgments in the same case by different persons, and the fact of progress in moral standards as civilization and culture advance. Differing apprehension of one or more of the many elements or factors converging, with confusing force, into almost every situation which calls for duty, easily accounts for most of the perplexing diversity. The relations are seen from different angles, and interpreted in different light. And the advance of civilizations, with their science and philosophy, brings truer and completer views of man's place and relations. The moral ideas of the human reason are, indeed, essentially identical in all men and all ages, and when human relations are apprehended in the same light, with equal clearness and fulness, the moral judgments substantially agree. But the progress of knowledge, throwing increasing light on these relations, leads the onward civilizations up into truer and better application of the principles of right in life. The different codes do not mean a change of primary moral ideas, but merely reflect and illustrate the changed and advancing apprehension of man's true relations to which these unchanging ideas are, and are forever to be, applied.

Another and kindred fact is explained, adding still further confirmation of the correctness of this theory. With perfect intentions men fulfil objective duty only in measure. Duty is only approximately accomplished, in varying degrees, from very faulty success to high grades of accuracy and completeness. A correct view of the ground of right must necessarily allow a consistent explanation of this fact. Sometimes the fact has been looked upon as inconsistent with any absolute dividing line between right and wrong, on one or the other side of which every action must fall. Not all good acts are perfect or faultless; not all evil ones are equally violations of duty. Of right actions some measure up better than others toward all that full duty requires. Dr. Martineau, partly in order to account for this scope of variety in moral correctness, urges a special definition of right and wrong: "Every action is right, which, in presence of a lower principle, follows a higher; every action is wrong, which, in presence of a higher principle, follows a lower."61 By the great difference in the rank of moral motives the reason of men's differing grades in the ascending or descending scale of character seems to come into view. But while the definition furnishes a rule frequently serviceable for guidance in questions of duty, it fails to define the ground of right; for it leaves unsettled the very point in this question, viz.: why one principle (as a motive) is morally "higher" or "lower" than another, or why some intentions or actions are right or wrong in any degree. And the offered explanation is unnecessary; for the unquestionable principle of moral requirement developed in relations, and discerned by the intuitive insight of the conscience fully explains the variety, when we remember the various degrees of accuracy and fulness with which these relations are understood and estimated. Every relation calling for duty is composite and complex, the various parts being often so connected as to come only partially or one-sidedly into view, preventing full insight of the moral demand, or accurate adjustment of sentiment and conduct to it. Rarely is any relation simple and alone. Often, indeed commonly, conscience has to decide duty as a resultant obligation out of very complicated and even antagonistic relationships. All this is amply sufficient to explain the different degrees in which the conduct meets duty. It is the necessary result of the impossibility of exactly fitting the moral sentiment or act to the demands of the moral relations. And the transparent explanation which this theory furnishes of the fact of such degrees strongly corroborates its scientific correctness.

3. It is verified, further, in the character of the various virtues, and their opposite immoralities. In their very conceptions these imply relations. They are moulded by them, and carry the shaping thus received. Justice, for example, in inter-human affairs, is absolute equity between man and man—exact reciprocity. Veracity expresses something that is due from one to another among beings whose welfare requires them to live according to the truth of things. The duty to speak the truth answers to the need and right of each one to know it. Love, or good-will, has already been shown to express the feeling which, in eternal fitness, is due from one sentient rational being to another, in the most generic relationship. Honesty means seeking equality of values in dealings one with another. Sincerity signifies genuineness in the temper and way we relate ourselves to those about us. We might run through all the precepts of the Christian decalogue and note that every one is based on some general or special relation, either of man to God or of men to their fellow-men. No virtue can get away from relations. The very concept of every one is moulded by them, and carries the shaping which they enstamp upon it as the coin does that of the die.

4. It is supported also by the analogy of organic and instinctive action. In organic action, the physically right is adaptation to environment, in which each part and movement fills its sphere and accomplishes its functions in the given place and relations. In instinctive action, the force is adjusted to the position and connections in which the animal is placed. For example, that of the bee is made to move correspondently to its relations to the individuals of its own kind and to the end of supporting and preserving the species. The instinct of the beaver adjusts its house to its peculiar surroundings; that of birds constructs their nests in distinct adaptation to the conditions that surround them. In animals that harvest and store their food, it suits the action to the particular environment and changing seasons. In every case instinct fits the activity to the given place and relations of its subject. This method by which organic and instinctive functions are set to secure right action in their special spheres, is exceedingly significant of the generic principle of all right action. In the light of the analogy, the morally right is a continuation of the same principle of harmony with constituted relations which is seen to be omnipresent in all the lower domain of nature extending up to human personality, but becoming moral at this point by being subject to free will and accomplished by it. It is to be remembered that teleologic plan and adaptation run through the entire cosmic order, from atoms to worlds and from minutest structures of body to the loftiest endowments of intelligent beings akin to God. Automatic action secures accordance in the inferior ranges. The grand distinction of the moral realm appears when, as the crowning ascent of life is reached, the principle of ethical harmony with divinely constituted relations is to be accepted and accomplished by the intelligence and freedom of man and is made the moral ought under personal responsibility.

5. It adds confirmation to this explanation, that it is implicitly assumed in all the conceptions and language of common life. Unbiassed by speculative theories the every-day thinking and speech of mankind connect duties with men's personal place and relations—duties modified and fixed according to the form and specialty of individual situations. The fact of duty itself is not more certain than this fact of the way in which spontaneous and unperverted thought grounds it. This fixing of the world's conceptions and speech in this form cannot be fairly interpreted as a caprice or accident, but as the true effect of the actual reality, which stands as its cause or warrant. And it is significant that speculative theorists who have framed for themselves some other account, whenever momentarily off their guard or forgetting to act as watch-dog for their theory, have been wont to turn unconsciously into forms of expression recognizing this relational ground for human duties.

II. In thus finding the right grounded directly on conformity to the relations given men in the constituted order of life, we have not yet reached the full solution of the great problem. For these relations are only a part of the aggregate moral constitution, and are not the last term of moral authority. They do not stand in their own independent right. Though they do directly create and shape the immediate duties for which they call, they are not the ultimate reality in which moral law has its deep foundations. So we must go back to the source and reason of these relations. The ultimate ground can be found, only in God himself who, in his underived eternal nature, is the absolute ground of the whole created universe, with all its interrelations which develop the reality of moral law.

The true conception of the divine creative action is that in it the thought and moral character of God become transitive and appear in the relations established and the ethical requirements which the relations impose. The constituted connections and order of life, which involve an ideal standard of right conduct and duty, reveal the divine mind or intention and in it the ultimate authority. The proximate basis, already discovered, in ideal conformity to the moral relations in which the moral agent is placed, therefore represents God, who, as the first cause and eternal ground of the creation with all its adaptations and laws, is the ultimate and unchangeable ground of right and of all moral law.

This statement of the ultimate ground means more than a resting of right simply on the will of God. A reference of it to his will has often stood for a claim that the moral law stands merely in the option of God or as only a product of his choice. Many have represented it as only an effect whose cause is an act of his will—that will originating or making "the right" rather than observing and declaring it, and the moral law having no basis other than such enactment of will. But this would imply that God himself is without moral character, acting from no norm of essential right, but simply by mere will ordaining what should pass as right among mankind. Our fundamental ethical conception of him, however, is that of a moral being and moral ruler. And to be moral means to love and choose the right as right. We must keep in mind here the relation between moral law and will, or the choices of the will. Moral authority does not exist as will, but as right. The great conception of the right, as witnessed to in universal conscience, is of something that appeals to will and requires the will to bow to its claim. Right is superior and authoritative for will, and cannot, therefore, be simply an effect of it. The right itself is basal for right willing, even with God himself. He wills according to it. Hence the moral law is not to be considered a product of his will, but an expression of his nature. In perfect freedom he wills the good because he is good, being in his eternal nature the absolute and infinite moral Perfection. It is a deep conviction in the moral consciousness of mankind, that God himself is in his very nature righteous and good, a conviction which utters itself evermore in the spontaneous exclamation: "Shall not the judge of all the earth do right!" Out of a non-moral ground the moral could never arise, and only in the very nature of God himself as perfect, infinite and unchangeable righteousness, do we reach the ultimate ground both of the constituted relations of human life and of the sublime and inextinguishable reality of moral law for the ordering of these relations. The profound meaning of the poet's couplet:

is to identify God and right as united in the eternal foundation of the moral system. There is thus, for the universe, what has been often designated "an eternal and immutable morality" whose authority and standard rest in the very Ground of the universe itself.

The conclusion thus apparent is vindicated by the very conception of the authority which binds men ethically. Mere "might cannot make right" or be that which has the reverence of the moral nature. Moral sovereignty does not attach to a simple absolutism of power. The ethical will bows to the right only. It would be a great contradiction to think of the power to which the moral submission of the soul is due as itself anything other than an ethical power, the morally good power, the morally good Being.

This ultimate ground of right, thus found, makes plain why ethics, in its full meaning and issue, is so closely allied to religion. Religion, in its spirit and aim, means fellowship with God, accordance of desire, will, and life with him. And ethics, even in the view of its early student Plato, looks to the same goal, "likeness to God." The supreme aim of Christianity is ethical, the transformation and exaltation of human conduct and character into the excellence and happiness of righteousness. That the moral life of man may, out of his broken, corrupt and disabled state of sin, thus become again harmonized with God and the divine constitution of things, redemption comes with its supernatural powers and help for human nature, enabling and accomplishing a realization of the ethical law in human character.