2. _The Moral Standard_. This is treated as a branch of Ontology, and
designated the "Real in morality," He declares that Kant"s notion of an
absolute moral law, binding by its inherent power over the mind, is a
mere fiction. The difference between inclination and the moral
imperative is merely a difference between lower and higher pleasure.
The moral law can have no authority unless imposed by a superior, as a
law emanating from a lawgiver. If man is not accountable to some higher
being, there is no distinction between duty and pleasure. The standard
of right and wrong is the moral _nature_ (not the arbitrary _will_) of
God.[25] Now, as we cannot know God--an infinite being,--so we have but
a relative conception of morality. We may have lower and higher ideas
of duty. Morality therefore admits of progress. But no advance in
morality contradicts the _principles_ previously acknowledged, however
it may vary the acts whereby those principles are carried out. And each
advance takes its place in the mind, not as a question to be supported
by argument, but as an axiom to be intuitively admitted. Each principle
appears true and irreversible so far as it goes, but it is liable to be
merged in a more comprehensive formula. It is an error of philosophers
to imagine that they have an absolute standard of morals, and thereupon
to set out _a priori_ the criterion of a possibly true revelation. Kant
said that the revealed commands of God could have no religious value,
unless approved by the moral reason; and Fichte held that no true
revelation could contain any intimation of future rewards and
punishments, or any moral rule not deducible from the principles of the
practical reason. But revelation has enlightened the practical reason,
as by the maxim--to love God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as
thyself--a maxim, says Mr. Mansel, that philosophy in vain toiled
after, and subsequently borrowed without acknowledgment.
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