Sheldon — The Literature of Ethical Science, 137 



Of course, the alternatives that do thus tempt our will are vastly fewer 

 than the physical possibilities we can coldly fancy. Persons really tempted 

 often do murder their best friends, mothers do strangle their first-born, 

 people do jump out of fourth-story windows." » * * *» The indeter- 

 minism I defend, the free-will theory of popular sense based on the judg- 

 ment of regret, represents that world as vulnerable, and liable to be injured 

 by certain of its parts if they act wrong. And it represents their acting 

 wrong as a matter of possibility or accident, neither inevitable nor yet to 

 be infallibly warded off." — •* The Dilemma of Determinism," by William 

 James. 



VI. Concerning the Relation between Ethics and Religion. 



'* If the infloite Spirit so communicates itself to the soul of man as to yield 

 the idea of a possible perfect life, and that consequent sense of personal 

 responsibility on the part of the individual for making the best of himself 

 as a social being from which the recognition of particular duties arises, 

 then it is a legitimate expression by means of metaphor — the only possible 

 means, except action, by which the consciousness of spiritual realities can 

 express itself — to say that our essential duties are commands of God. If 

 again the self-communication of the infinite Spirit to the soul of man is 

 such that man is conscious of his relation to a conscious being, who is in 

 eternal perfection all that man has it in him to come to be, then it is a 

 legitimate expression of that conscious relation by means of metaphor to 

 say that God sees whether His commands are fulfilled by us or no, and an 

 appropriate emotion to feel shame as in His presence for omissions or vio- 

 lations of duty incognizable by other men." — ''Prolegomena to Ethics," 

 by T. H. Green. 



" A moral world order, a future life, and a moral world governor who 

 assures the final triumph of goodness, are the assumptions to which we 

 inevitably come when we attempt to think the moral problem through." — 

 " The Principles of Ethics," by Borden P. Bowne. 



"Our main reliance, then, for social progress must be on 'the law 

 written on the heart,' the law of love accepted by reason and enforced by 

 conscience. Religion can reinforce the power of the moral ideal, but it 

 does this, not chiefiy by offers of future rewards and threats of future 

 punishments, but by setting before men, as the object of faith and worship, 

 a God whose inmost nature is love." — "The Moral Order of the World," 

 by Alexander Balmain Bruce. 



" In their essential contents, religion and morality are wholly indepen- 

 dent of each other. Religion, as we have seen, is a creed and a cult, a 

 belief and form of worship, directed to the supernatural; morality is good 

 will and conduct directed to the welfare of man, in some cases is nothing 

 more than right social relations. Thus God is the object of one and man 

 the object of the other. This single fact stamps them as distinct prov- 

 inces."— "The Elements of Ethics," by James H. Hyslop. 



