THE "BEDUCTION TO INIQUITY." 45
tions constantly change with the growth of knowledge, there is a striking consensus of moral perceptions. In all stages of social development, and under all forms of religion, no matter how distorted by selfish motives and intellectual perversions, truth, justice, and benevolence have ever been esteemed, and all our intellectual progress has given us no higher moral ideals than have obtained among primitive peoples. The very distortions of the moral sense, the apparent differences in the moral stan- dards of different times and peoples, do but show essential unity. Wherever moral perceptions have differed or do differ the disturbance may be traced to causes which, originating in selfishness and perpetuated by intellectual perversions, have distorted or dulled the moral faculty. It seems to me that the Creator, whom both the Duke of Argyll and myself recognize behind physical and mental laws, has not left us to grope our way in darkness, but has, indeed, given us a light by which our steps may be safely guided a compass by which, in all degrees of intellectual development, the way to the highest good may be surely traced. But just as the compass by which the mariner steers his course over the trackless sea in the blackest night, may be disturbed by other attractions, tnay be misread or clogged, so is it with the moral sense. This evidently is not a world in which men must be either wise or good, but a world in which they may bring about good or evil as they use the faculties given them.
I speak of this because the recognition of the supremacy and certainty of the moral faculties seems to me to throw light upon problems otherwise dark, rather than because it is necessary here, since I admit even more unreservedly than the Duke the competence of the tribunal before which he cites me. I am willing to submit every question of political economy to the test of ethics. So far as I can see there is no social law which does not conform to moral
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