158 ASSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



must know who it is who commands ? And when 

 the question is asked it must be answered. We 

 cannot go back to simple acceptance. As Dr. 

 Martineau puts it, " A sovereign title must either 

 be perfect or good for nothing ; against a detected 

 pretender there can be no high treason." x We 

 then enter on one of the two alternative courses. 

 We defend its authority either by appealing to 

 something else in human nature or by something 

 outside and above human nature. 



The former group of theories are subdivisible. 

 The question being, Why is right, right ? we have 

 the answer of 



(a) Hedonism, Utilitarianism, evolutionary ethics, 

 in an ascending scale, declaring that Right is right 

 because it is pleasant either to the individual, or 

 the community, or to humanity at large, producing 

 the highest or the highest possible amount of 

 pleasure to each, consistent with the welfare of the 

 whole. 



Q3) The " moral sense " school of Hutcheson and 

 Shaftesbury, who teach that Right is right because 

 it is immediately and instinctively recognized as 

 morally beautiful. Against this intuitive judgment 

 there is no appeal, and hence it looked like an 

 answer to the selfish hedonism of Hobbes. But 

 de gustibus non disputandum is a dangerous prin- 

 ciple of subjectivism to introduce into morals. If 

 1 See the whole passage, Study of Religion, i. pp. 25, 26. 



