128 THE REV. H. J. CLARKE ON THE 
classes them as a matter of course among the things which 
are right. 
It will thus appear that any being capable of deviating 
from rectitude must needs have an originated and therefore 
dependent existence, yet that its attributes must include a 
will, that it must be able to make a choice that is real, and 
not determined absolutely by the exercise of supreme control. 
If therefore the result of an investigation of that which is 
necessarily right relatively to such things as may possibly be 
wrong be the discovery of principles in respect to which it 
may be affirmed that the will of man is under an obligation 
to conform to them, the ascertainment of these principles 
constitutes a Science of Rectitude. 
But if power be conceived as beg non-volitional, and 
therefore unintelligent, no obligation to it can be rationally 
acknowledged. In point of fact, no human imagination ever 
has invested it with claims upon any creature. A fetish 
worshipper instinctively associates with the object of his 
adoration mysterious properties of a volitional kind; other- 
wise what could he hope to gain by treating it with 
reverence? No idolatry, however gross, is in this respect 
absolutely irrational; matter must be somehow spiritualized 
in imagination before the contemplation of any attributes it 
may seem to possess can excite the sense of moral obligation ; 
a thorough-going and philosophically consistent materialist 
is of necessity a utilitarian pure and simple. With him 
fundamental duty can signify nothing more than what a man 
is at liberty to conceive, if such be his fancy, that he owes to 
himself. On the other hand, the notion that the opposition 
of self-will to the order of the universe is resistance to a 
rightful claim, and is for that reason reprehensible and merits 
punishment, postulates a fundamental Will. 
How has this notion arisen? We may, I think, freely 
admit that religious conceptions of the sort which charac- 
terises early and immature speculations concerning the 
government of the universe are polytheistic, and show that 
the human mind is far from having any imnate tendency to 
an immediate intuition of the necessary existence of a Supreme 
Ruler. How that light is to be accounted for which has been 
rolling away the old world darkness, I need not stay to mquire ; 
it may suffice if I call attention to the indisputable historical 
fact that in the recognition of a unifying principle under- 
lying all phenomena, scientific observation has been antici- 
pated by religious belief. But what we have to ascertain is 
the nature of the unmistakably reverential sentiment in 
