1892 THE BASIS OF MORALITY 223 



Moral duty consists in tlie observance of those rules of 

 conduct which contribute to the welfare of society, and 

 by implication, of the individuals who compose it. 



The end of society is peace and mutual protection, so 

 that the individual may reach the fullest and highest life 

 attainable by man. The rules of conduct by which this 

 end is to be attained are discoverable — like the other so- 

 called laws of Nature — by observation and experiment, 

 and only in that way. 



Some thousands of years of such experience have led 

 to the generalisations, that stealing and murder, for 

 example, are inconsistent with the ends of society. There 

 is no more doubt that they are so than that unsupported 

 stones tend to fall. The man who steals or murders, 

 breaks his implied contract with society, and forfeits all 

 protection. He becomes an outlaw, to be dealt with as 

 any other feral creature. Criminal law indicates the 

 ways which have proved most convenient for dealing 

 with him. 



All this would be true if men had no " moral sense " 

 at all, just as there are rules of perspective which must 

 be strictly observed by a draughtsman, and are quite 

 independent of his having any artistic sense. 



The moral sense is a very complex atfair — dependent 

 in part upon associations of pleasure and pain, approba- 

 tion and disapprobation formed by education in early 

 youth, but in part also on an innate sense of moral beauty 

 and ugliness (how originated need not be discussed), which 

 is possessed by some people in great strength, while some 

 are totally devoid of it — just as some children draw, or 

 are enchanted by music while mere infants, while others 

 do not know "Cherry Ripe" from "Eule Britannia," 

 nor can represent the form of the simplest thing to the 

 end of their lives. 



Now for this last sort of people there is no reason why 

 they should discharge any moral duty, except from fear 

 of punishment in all its grades, from mere disapprobation 



