ii8 The Morality of Nature 



If any code or law is effective under liberal institutions 

 of government or of social custom, there is presumption 

 that it is right, not always as representing an unalterable 

 truth, but simply as representing the consensus of opinion 

 of its expediency. A code of conduct demands respect at 

 all times, as the expression of the generally accepted opinion, 

 toward which any individual owes deference and refuses 

 it at his peril. 



There is serious responsibility attaching to the individual 

 whose egotism sets him in a minority opposition to the 

 desires of his fellows, and who even if supported by some 

 hypothetical right, is certainly committing the primitive error 

 of disrespect, a fault which nature reproves in man as in the 

 very lowest creatures. 



From these considerations it appears that while the natural 

 law of conduct cannot be codified, it will yet operate by 

 any code, in its due value, as part, with other things, of the 

 environment; and there is nothing in their evanescence to 

 prevent codes being valuable as provisional instruments. On 

 the contrary they are necessary as the stipulations by which 

 a member may know his duty in a community, and they are 

 even more needed when the higher organization of human 

 beings seek to act in harmony according to the wisdom of 

 the wisest. But the rightness of a code or law does not 

 arise in the fact that it is uttered by authority. No thing is 

 right merely because it is commanded by a teacher, nor is 

 any act wrong because a teacher or law giver has forbidden 

 it. If it is right it is because it is beneficial to the doer or 

 his associates. If it is wrong it is because it is harmful to 

 the doer or his associates. The lawmaker only puts into 



