reckoned, along with the highest good, essential in the well ordering of a world of free activity.

This is the sanction by which the Divine Ruler of the Universe upholds his government against trespass. We instinctively revolt at the thought that the Deity is the author of sin, the source and sum of evil. But that he is the author of pain cannot be doubted, and is entirely accordant with the infinite benevolence that proposes and actively seeks to accomplish the highest welfare of humanity.

CHAPTER VI

RIGHT AND WRONG

§ 55. The substantive notions of a right and a wrong, used hitherto, need now to be supplemented by the corresponding qualifying notions of right and wrong.

A right is accorded in law; right is according to law. Right lines are straight lines; we draw them by means of a rule or ruler. So in the ethical sense, right actions are such as conform to rules of conduct, implying a ruler. More generally, they are those conforming to the moral law, any deviation from strict rectitude being wrong.1

1 The use of topical terms such as right and wrong, justice, duty, ought, service, charity or love, good - is avoided in this treatise, until the term occurs in place, is defined and discussed. The term welfare is an exception. For etymology of right, see § 19, note. Wrong = perverted ; from Anglo-Saxon wrang, pt. t. of wringan, to wring, twist, bend aside; cognate with wry, and awry, this compounded of on and wry = on the twist. Cf. Lat. tortus from torquere.

SKEAT.

"Goodness in actions is like unto straightness; wherefore that which is done well we term right. For, as the straight way is most acceptable to him that travelleth, because by it he cometh soonest to his journey's end, so in action, that which doth lye the evenest between us and the end we desire, must needs be fittest for our use. - HOOKER, Eccles. Pol., bk. i, § 8. "What is rectitude or rightness as the characteristic of an action? According to Price and others, this term denotes a simple and primitive idea, and cannot be explained. It might as well be asked, what is truth, as the characteristic of a proposition? It is a capacity of our rational nature to see and acknowledge truth; but we cannot define what truth is. We call it the conformity of our thoughts with the reality of things. But it may be doubted how far this explanation makes the nature of truth more intelligible. In like manner, some explain rectitude by saying that it consists in a congruity between an action and the relations of the agent. It is the idea we form of an

The terms a right and right are, in last analysis, coextensive. Whatever one has a right to do is right for him to do. This seems obvious. Yet it is commonly supposed that exceptions often occur, and even moralists have taught that a man may have a right to do what is not right. A planter, it is said, has a right to destroy his crop, but it would not be right.1 This paradox cannot be allowed. It arises perhaps from the false notion that one has a moral right to do whatever is not forbidden by civil law, which is mere legality, not morality. The true limitations of rights are not found in civil law, nor in enactments of any sort, but in the nature and relations of men, which the most elaborate enactments fall far short of defining completely. A producer destroying a product of any value, an heir wasting his inheritance, an idler not exercising his ability, is wronging or trespassing on rights of others naturally vested in these things. In the proper ethical sense a right to do a wrong, or to do wrong,

is absurd.

Conversely, whatever is right for one to do he has a right to do; any interference by any other is a trespass. For, if

action, when it is, in every way, conformable to the relations of the agent and the circumstances in which he is placed. On contemplating such an action, we approve of it, and feel that if we were placed in such circumstances, and in such relations, we should be under an obligation to perform it.

Now the circumstances and relations in which man is placed arise from his nature, and from the nature of things in general; and hence it has been said, that rectitude is founded in the nature and fitness of things; that is, an action is right when it is fit or suitable to all the relations and circumstances of the agent." - FLEMING, Vocabulary, ad verb. 1 “The adjective right has a much wider signification than the substantive right. Everything is right which is conformable to the supreme rule of human action; but that only is a right which, being conformable to the supreme rule, is realized in society and vested in a particular person. Hence the two words may often be properly opposed. We may say that a poor man has no right to relief, but it is right he should have it. A rich man has a right to destroy the harvest of his fields, but to do so would not be right." WHEWELL, Elements of Morality, bk. i, § 84.

it be not right, it is wrong, these being contradictories; and in doing wrong one always inflicts a wrong, greater or less, near or remote, on some one affected by his act which, if not punishable, is at least censurable. Hence the terms are coextensive.

A moral right, or simply a right should be distinguished from a legal or jural right.1 The one is generic, the other specific. The one is accorded in universal moral law, the other is accorded in imperfect and exceptional civil law. A right properly implies both exemption from legitimate interference in its exercise and an obligation to exercise. it; whereas a jural right implies immunity merely, not obligation. Hence the unqualified term leads to confusion. Sometimes indeed there is formal opposition between moral and legal rights, for occasionally unrighteous laws are enacted, technically conferring rights that are immoral, authorizing wrongs. A moral right to act is an obligation to act, which is synonymous with right action.

§ 56. Right or wrong is the moral quality of a voluntary personal action. As propositions are always either true or false, so actions are always either right or wrong. A true proposition - accords with axiomatic logical principle, and a right action accords with axiomatic moral principle. As one of two contradictory propositions must be false or logically

1 "A party has a right when another or others are bound or obliged by the law to do or to forbear towards or in regard of him." —. - AUSTIN, Lectures on Jurisprudence, § 576. A legal or jural right "signifies that which jurists denominate a faculty, which resides in a determinate party or parties by virtue of a given law, and avails against a party or parties other than the party or parties in whom it resides. . . . It is manifest that right as signifying faculty, and right as signifying justice, are widely different though not unconnected terms. But nevertheless the terms are confounded by many of the writers who attempt a definition of right, and their attempts to determine the meaning of that very perplexing expression are, therefore, mere jargon.' .” — Idem, § 264, note. Cf. Mill, Logic, bk. v, ch. 7, § 1 (p. 569). Also cf. supra, § 36, note.

absurd, so one of two incompatible actions must be wrong or morally absurd. An action that is wrong is a moral selfcontradiction, inconsistent with what may be known to be right or in accord with axiomatic law, and thus is a selfcondemned absurdity.1

It has already been stated that on the empirical occasion of a voluntary personal action, we have an intuitive discernment by conscience of the existence in it of moral quality, we discern that it is either right or wrong. But whether the observed action, as striking a blow, be right or be wrong, is not at all intuitive, not at all discerned immediately by the pure practical reason or conscience. Which one of these two contrary qualities it has, conscience does not know; it knows only that it must have one or the other.2

1 In the moral relation of one man to another, we distinguish the one as having a right and hence susceptible of a wrong, the other as doing right or wrong. Let p represent a patient having a certain right, and a an agent to whom this right relates. If a respects this right, by either acting or not acting as the case may require, then he does right, and the right of p is adjusted; but if a defaults, then he does wrong, and p suffers a wrong, a trespass. Thus a wrong is conditioned on and coexists with a right; whereas the qualities right and wrong, being contradictories in form and contraries in fact, cannot co-exist in one and the same action. Right and wrong are marks of kinds of action; while merit in the one kind, and demerit in the other, are marks of degree. See Elements of Deductive Logic, § 23, and § 125. In addition let it be noted that whatever accords with universal order is right; and whatever disaccords with universal order is wrong. A special order when at variance with universal order is wrong, as in systematic vice or tyrannical rule; and a special disorder when resolving into universal order is right, as in reformation or revolution. In general, however, disorder is wrong; or whatever is irregular is wrong. Moreover, whatever is right is reasonable, rational; and whatever is wrong is unreasonable, irrational. A wrong is a blunder; sin is folly; what is wicked is stupid; crime is craze; intelligent prudence does right. Said a certain one: "I have often been called a scoundrel, but no one ever yet called me a fool." If he was a scoundrel, then he was a rank fool. Furthermore, nature is a system of universal order (§ 15); hence it is natural to do right, unnatural to do wrong, and sin is the most unnatural thing in the world.

2 "The primary element is a simple irreducible perception of the distinc