supremely authoritative, inasmuch as they were grounded on nature herself. Nature herself is here the ground of our obligation, and under her behests we are bound to pursue to the utmost our own pleasure and avoid our own pain. But on what are the morals of society grounded? On something much less authoritative, on mere convention or arbitrary agreement among men. But these conventional rules are, or at least appear to be, less obligatory than the injunctions laid upon us by our own appetites, passions, and desires. Why, then, should they be obeyed? what, in short, is the ground of the moral obligation imposed upon us by society? The ground on which man's obligation as an individual rests is, as I have said, obvious enough; it rests upon nature herself. But man's obligations as a citizen do not rest on nature, for they stand opposed to much which nature dictates. On what, then, do they rest? what is the ground of social moral obligation? For the raising of this question we are mainly indebted to the Sophists, to the spirit, if not to the letter, of their inquiries; and the question seems to have been brought to light in some such manner as I have described, namely, by playing off the natural or isolated man against the social and artificial man—the individual, taken simply and as he is in himself against the individual taken socially, and as he is in company with his fellow-men.
27. I have said that the Sophists furnished no
