JS 
of moral agency, as a whole, which protects our analysis 
which is not fr° m the objection that it finds every man a mere 
makinThe i^ 9 standard of right to himself. To say that man 
dividual ne his sees in himself the requirement of obedience to the 
“ always true " is no doubt to represent the finite as 
in relation with the infinite, or at least with that to which the 
conscious moral agent defers without reserve, as to superior and 
essential right : but it is not identifying the agent with the right. 
Man's nature tells him that there is and must be a rule 
of ideal right ; it tells him too that this lies at the founda- 
tion of all fit praise or blame ; and thus he is in fact prepared 
to make some estimate of action in others, and of the laws 
believed to be true in general experience. 
The mind 31. While we thus are obliged to speak of the 
to The’ absolute “ true-always 33 as abstract, and even eternal and 
menaif pheno ' necessary, we are equally obliged to regard it as in 
relation with the very essence of conscious agency 
or mind. And we can thus conceive how the conscious 
agent may regard the absolute in the phenomenal, the ab- 
stract in the concrete, the infinite as partially reflected in the 
finite ; the mind having essential inner relation to the absolute, 
and an active or potential relation to the exterior world of 
things. 
We thus base all our conclusions concerning the good per se 
(as well as those which regard the good, in its proceeding 
from the conscious agent), on- the closest examination we can 
give to the facts of our nature. 
32. The facts, that we all rightly deal with men as deter- 
miners of some of their acts; that some freedom, 
*e^T§ms d ne- and some contingency, are thus implied; and that 
absolute and originator of action often is conscious that he 
ought to originate it in conformity with anterior 
truth to which his own essence stands related, are alike in- 
disputable : as also is the de facto sameness of that truth 
among men. 
If it be said that the eternal and necessary truths which 
are spoken of imply Eternal Mind as their perfect abode — • 
granting that the Alexandrians were right in thus developing 
the Platonic ideas,— this hinders not our conclusion that all 
real minds or conscious beings, however limited, stand in 
relation to the ideal, the necessary and always-true. 
and prior to Since then our analysis discloses the fact that 
external law. ideas 0 f the g 00( j arL d right belong to the first 
elements of our being, we can recognize a foundation for 
the moral and social accountability of man prior to all 
positive and external law. If, in what has been or will be 
