In this way does truth, bearing the supreme crown, give, or refuse, to the products of positive legislation its sanction, and it is from this crown that they derive their true binding force.[46] For as the old sage of Ephesus says in one of his pregnant Sibyl-like utterances: “All human laws are fed from the one divine law.”[47]
[38.] Besides the laws referring to the limits of right, in every society there are other positive enactments as to the way in which an individual is to act inside his own sphere of right, how he is to make use of his liberty and his property. Public opinion approves industry, generosity, and economy each in its place, while disapproving idleness, greed, prodigality and much else. In the statutes no such laws are to be found, but they stand written within the hearts of the people. Nor are reward and punishment lacking as regards this kind of positive law. These consist in the advantages and disadvantages of good and bad reputation. There exists here, as it were, a positive code of morality, the complement of the positive code of law. This positive code of morality also may contain both right and wrong enactments. To be truly binding they need to be in accord with the rules which, as we have already seen, are capable of recognition by the reason, as a duty of love towards the highest practical good.
And so we have really found the natural sanction of morality which we sought.
[39.] I do not linger here to show how this sanction operates. Every one would rather say to himself: “I am acting rightly,” than “I am acting foolishly.” And to no one capable of recognizing what is better is this fact entirely indifferent in choosing. In the case of some it is nearly so, whereas for others it is of the very first importance. Innate dispositions are themselves diverse and much advance may be made by education and one’s own ethical conduct. Enough, truth speaks, and whoever is of the truth hears her voice.
[40.] Throughout the multiplicity of derived laws graven by nature herself upon the tables of the law, utilitarian considerations, as we have seen, form the standard. As now, in different situations, we resort to different means, so also with regard to these different situations different special precepts must hold good. They may be quite conflicting in their tenour without of course being really contradictory, since they are intended for different circumstances. In this sense, then, a relativity in ethics is rightly asserted.
Ihering has drawn attention to this,[48] but he is not as he seems to think, one of the first. On the contrary the doctrine was known of old and is insisted upon by Plato in his Republic.[49] Aristotle in his Ethics, and with special emphasis in his Politics has affirmed it.[50] The scholastic philosophers also held fast to the doctrine, and in modern times men even of such energetic ethical and political convictions as Bentham[51] have not denied it. If the fanatics of the French Revolution failed to recognize it, still the clear-headed among their fellow-citizens, even in that time, did not fall into such a delusion. Laplace, for example, in his Essai philosophique sur les probabilités occasionally bears witness to the true teaching and raises his voice in warning.[52]
Thus it happens that the distinguished investigator who has disclosed to us the spirit of Roman law and to whom, as the author of Der Zweck im Recht, we also are bound in many respects to tender our thanks, has yet here, as we see, done nothing else than render the doctrine unclear by confounding it with an essentially different and false doctrine of relativity. According to this doctrine, no proposition in ethics, not even the proposition that the best in the widest sphere ought to be the determining standard of action, would have unexceptional validity. In primitive times and even later, throughout long centuries, such a procedure would, he expressly says, have been as immoral as, in later times, the opposite conduct. We must, he thinks, on looking back into the times of cannibalism sympathize rather with the cannibals, and not with those who perhaps, in advance of their time, preached even then the universal love of neighbour.[53] These are errors which have been crushingly refuted not merely by philosophical reflection upon the fundamental principles of ethics, but also by the successes of Christian missionaries.
[41.] Thus the road leading to the goal which we set before us has been traversed. For a time it led us through strange and rarely trodden districts, finally, however, the results at which we have arrived smile upon us like old acquaintances. In declaring love of neighbour and self-sacrifice, both for our country and for mankind to be duties, we are only echoing what is proclaimed all around us. We should also find by going further into particulars that lying, treachery, murder, debauchery and much besides that is held to be morally base are, measured by the standard of the principles we have set up, condemned, one as unjust, another as immoral.
All this would seem, in a measure, familiar to us as the shores of his native land to the sea-farer when, after a voyage happily consummated, he sees them rise suddenly into view, and the smoke curling from the old familiar chimney.
[42.] And certainly we are at liberty to rejoice over this. The absolute clearness with which all this follows is good omen for the success of our undertaking, since it is the method by which we arrived at our result, which is obviously the most essential feature in it. Without it what advantage can our inquiry be said to have over that of others? Even Kant, for example, whose doctrines concerning the principles of ethics were quite different, arrived, in the further course of his statement, pretty much to the popular view. But what we miss in him is strict logical coherence. Beneke has shown that the Categorical Imperative as Kant used it, may be so employed as to prove, in the same case, contradictory statements and so everything and nothing.[54] If, none the less, Kant is able to arrive so often at right conclusions, this must be attributed to the fact that from the outset he had harboured such opinions. Even Hegel, had he not known in other ways that the sky was blue, would certainly never have succeeded by means of his dialectic in deducing this à priori. Did he not equally succeed in demonstrating that there were seven planets, a number accepted in his day, but which in our time science has long left behind?