judgments of the natural reason in moral questions are as certain
and free from error as its capacity is shown to be weak and limited in
theoretical science. The idea of morality never deceives anyone; the moral
law is innate in every man. Although Christianity has given the best
development of our duties, yet the moral law can be understood and followed
by all men, even by heathen and atheists. We do not need to be Christians
in order to act virtuously; the knowledge given by conscience is not
dependent upon revelation. From the knowledge of the good to the practice
of it is, it is true, a long step; we may be convinced of moral truth
without loving it, and God's grace alone is able to strengthen us against
the power of the passions, by adding to the illumination of the mind an
inclination of the heart toward the good. Temperament, custom, self-love
move the soul more strongly than general truths. As in life pleasure is far
outbalanced by pain and vexation, so far more evil acts are done than good
ones: history is a collection of misdeeds, with scarcely one virtuous act
for a thousand crimes. It is not the external action that constitutes the
ethical character of a deed, but the motive or disposition; almsgiving from
motives of pride is a vice, and only when practiced out of love to one's
neighbors, a virtue. God looks only at the act of the will; our highest
duty, and one which admits of no exceptions, is never to act contrary to
conscience.

CHAPTER IV.

LOCKE.

After the Cartesian philosophy had given decisive expression to the
tendencies of modern thought, and had been developed through occasionalism
to its completion in the system of Spinoza, the line of further progress
consisted in two factors: Descartes's principles--one-sidedly rationalistic
and abstractly scientific, as they were--were, on the one hand, to be
supplemented by the addition of the empirical element which Descartes had
neglected, and, on the other, to be made available for general culture by
approximation to the interests of practical life. England, with its freer
and happier political conditions, was the best place for the accomplishment
of both ends, and Locke, a typically healthy and sober English thinker,
with a distaste for extreme views, the best adapted mind. Descartes, the
rationalist, had despised experience, and Bacon, the empiricist, had
despised mathematics; but Locke aims to show that while the reason is the
instrument of scie