148 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



of which we say that we ought not to do them. It would 

 be a misuse of language to say that a hungry man ought to 

 eat, and our passions often oblige us to do those things we 

 ought not to have done. In other directions, the extension 

 of the term ought is the wider. We say that a man ought 

 to enter his horse for a certain race, though he is not obliged 

 to do it. In other words, the term is applied to prudential 

 as well as to moral conduct, whereas the term obligation 

 is not. 



What concerns us now is the distinction between the 

 meaning of the term, according as it is applied to moral or 

 to prudential conduct. In the first case it is absolute ; 

 we ought to obey our conscience because we ought. We 

 neither know nor can discover any further reason; and if 

 one is proposed, it is merely a speculative explanation, and 

 not a motive having a causal influence on our conduct. 

 No doubt a hypothetical form may sometimes be imparted 

 to an ethical proposition, but this is always deceptive, and 

 obscures its real meaning. It might, for example, have 

 been said to the three hundred Spartans, If you wish to save 

 Greece, you must hold the pass. But their obligation was 

 independent of the safety of their country, and this was 

 not the reason they gave themselves. They held the pass 

 because they were ordered to do so (rots KCLVW prj^acri 7rei0o- 

 jjitvoL), and the only true explanation is that they obeyed 

 orders because they were bound by their conscience to obey 

 them, whether Greece was thereby saved or lost. On the 

 other hand, the prudential ought is always conditional ; if 

 a man ought to enter his horse for a race, there is some other 

 reason why he should, besides the mere entry for the race, 

 and that is only a means to some further result. He ought 

 to enter the horse because it is likely to win. 



Another distinction must be mentioned : the term 

 obligation , as we have said, means constraint ; the term 

 ought , on the contrary, contains an implication of freedom. 

 Nevertheless, in their ethical sense, they always apply to 

 the same conduct. Neither term can apply to actions 

 which we are debarred from doing by constraint from 





