A SUMMARY OF ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS. 159 



the variety of moral tastes is appealed to in order 

 to discredit conscience, the representing it as a 

 moral sense robs its judgments of universality. 



(7) The rational school of Cudworth and Clarke 

 answer that Right is right because it is true, and 

 Conscience is assimilated to the speculative reason, 

 discerning at a glance the eternal and immutable 

 truths of morals, as it discerns the necessity of 

 mathematical truth. 



Here we find the " moral sense school " and the 

 " rational school " both opposing the " selfish 

 school," both attempting to justify the absolute 

 authority of conscience, but in doing so they rob 

 it either of its uniqueness or its authority. 



The other line is that of what may be called 

 theological ethics, which connects conscience with 

 the divine rather than with the human. This in 

 no way implies that morality is a dependance on 

 religion, or conscience the product of Faith, but 

 rather that conscience is, as Cardinal Newman 

 calls it, " the creative principle of religion." To 

 make morality "positive" instead of "natural," 

 is to destroy it, and it is truer to base the will 

 of God on morals than morals on the will of 

 God. 



We start, then, from morals, from the authority 

 of conscience, and the fact that right is right. 

 But, as Mantineau puts it, "Ethics must either 

 perfect themselves into religion, or disintegrate them- 



