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of strife, and it can find no place for the prophet who proclaims
some new moral insight. Certain difficult questions of theory are
involved, but before considering them let us remind ourselves
of some of the things that only opposition to positive morality
could achieve.
The world owes something to the Gospels, though not so
much as it would if they had had more influence. It owes some-
thing to those who denounced slavery and the subjection of
women. We may hope that in time it will owe something to
those who denounce war and economic injustice. In the eight-
eenth and nineteenth centuries, it owed much to the apostles of
tolerance; perhaps it will again in some happier age than ours.
198 power and moral codes
Revolutions against the mediaeval Church, the Renaissance
monarchies, and the present power of plutocracy, are necessary
for the avoidance of stagnation. Admitting, as we must, that
mankind needs revolution and individual morality, the problem
is to find a place for these things without plunging the world
into anarchy.
There are two questions to be considered: first, what is the
wisest attitude for positive morality, from its own standpoint, to
take to personal morality? Second, what degree of respect does
personal morality owe to positive morality? But before discuss-
ing either of these, something must be said as to what is meant
by personal morality.
Personal morality may be considered as a historical phenom-
enon, or from the standpoint of the philosopher. Let us begin
with the former.
Almost every individual that has ever existed, so far as history
is aware, has had a profound horror of certain kinds of acts. As a
rule, these acts are held in abhorrence not only by one indi-
vidual, but by a whole tribe or nation or sect or class. Sometimes
the origin of the abhorrence is unknown, sometimes it can be
traced to a historical personage who was a mortal innovator. We
know why Mohammedans will not make images of animals or
human beings; it is because the Prophet forbade them to do so.
We know why orthodox Jews will not eat hare; it is because the
Mosaic Law declares that the hare is unclean. Such prohibitions,
when accepted, belong to positive morality; but in their origin,
at any rate when their origin is known, they belonged to private
morality.
Morality, for us, however, has come to mean something more
than ritual precepts, whether positive or negative. In the form
in which it is familiar to us it is not primitive, but appears to
have a number of independent sources Chinese sages, Indian
Buddhists, Hebrew prophets, and Greek philosophers. These
men, whose importance in history it is difficult to overestimate,
power and moral codes 199
all lived within a few centuries of each other, and all shared
certain characteristics which marked them out from their pre-
decessors. Lao-Tse and Chung-Tse deliver the doctrine of the Tao
as what they know of their own knowledge, not through trad-
ition or the wisdom of others; and the doctrine consists not of
specific duties, but of a way of life, a manner of thinking and
feeling, from which it will become plain, without the need for
rules, what must be done on each occasion. The same may be
said of the early Buddhists. The Hebrew prophets, at their best,
transcend the Law, and advocate a new and more inward kind
of virtue, recommended not by tradition, but by the words thus
saith the Lord . Socrates acts as his daemon commands, not as
the legally constituted authorities desire; he is prepared to suffer
martyrdom rather than be untrue to the inner voice. All these
men were rebels in their day, and all have come to be honoured.
Something of what was new in them has come to be taken as a
matter of course. But it is not altogether easy to say what this
something is.
The minimum that must be accepted by any thoughtful per-
son who either adheres to a religion having a historical origin,
or thinks that some such religion was an improvement on what
went before, is this: that a way of life which was in some sense
better than some previous way of life was first advocated by
some individual or set of individuals, in opposition to the teach-
ing of State and Church in their day. It follows that it cannot
always be wrong for an individual to set himself up in moral
questions, even against the judgement of all mankind up to his
day. In science, every one now admits the corresponding doc-
trine; but in science the ways of testing a new doctrine are
known, and it soon comes to be generally accepted, or else
rejected on other grounds than tradition. In ethics, no such
obvious ways exist by which a new doctrine can be tested. A
prophet may preface his teaching thus saith the Lord , which is
sufficient for him; but how are other people to know that he
200 power and moral codes
has had a genuine revelation? Deuteronomy, oddly enough, pro-
poses the same test as is often held to be conclusive in science,
namely success in prediction: And if thou say in thine heart,
How shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken?
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