SCIENCE OF RECTITUDE AS DISTINCT FROM EXPEDIENCE. 133 
that “its morality is constituted by its authoritative prescrip- 
tion, and not by its fulfilling the primary ends of the social 
institution.” * For sur ely we are not expected to assume 
that a person may reasonably account himself wicked who 
presumes to act or think or feel in any matter or in any 
respect otherwise than in accordance with laws and rules 
which owe their authority to civil government or to prevalent 
custom. If in the court of his conscience he pleads guilty, 
if he acknowledges that he has acted, not only without due 
regard to his own interest, but blamably, he recognizes in 
so domg an essentially deeper obligation than can possibly 
have for its basis a fluctuatng aggregate of more or less 
conflicting wills. The question at issue leaves it unnecessary 
to ascertain his religious creed, before we attempt to deter- 
mine the import of his acknowledgment that he has acted 
wickedly. He has, it may be, no religious creed at all, but 
he still proves himself to have deviated from rectitude, and 
thus bears witness, although unconsciously, to the fact that 
his will has come into collision with a Will to which are due 
absolute submission and unlimited reverence. His conscience, 
in pleading guilty, assuredly recognizes the authority of a 
Judge whose jurisdiction is the universe, and from whose 
tribunal there can be no appeal. Of this we suppose him to 
be unaware: we are not concerned, however, to mquire how 
he interprets his sense of guilt, but simply to point out that 
it necessitates a distinction between remorseful acquiescence 
in the claims of rectitude, and the sort of perturbation which 
is experienced when recollected acts are discovered, in view 
of consequences, to have been inexpedient. 
Yet, how are the claims of rectitude to be sentemete 
For any attempt to expound them systematically, and with 
the precision which a science presupposes, must of course 
await the answer to this question. Objectors, as might have 
been expected, call attention to the undeniable fact that the 
different nations and races of men have never been of one 
mind as to what constitutes nght and wrong, and that in 
this matter wide diversities of opinion prevail. We are re- 
minded, among other things, that “polygamy is regarded as 
right in Turkey, India, and China, and as wrong in England,” 
that “marriages we pronounce incestuous were legitimate 
in ancient times,” that “the views entertained by Plato 
and Aristotle as to the intercourse of the sexes are now 
* Mental and Moral Scienze, by A. Bain, “ Ethics,” Part 1, chap. iii, 
§ 10. 
LZ 
