Were our only motives since the world begun.
Now keep this in mind as its use you’ll find,
As we treat of ethics and its motives behind.
“Self-imposed precepts” are not the moral code,
Prevalent in places where men their guns load,
To meet a fellow man in the public road,
To try out the question with bullets of lead,
On the field of honor, till one or both are dead;
Nor is it the legal code enacted by man,
Making rules against things under ban.