GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

NATURE OF THE MORAL FACULTY 301
infallible. Intuitions, if .they are to lay claim to our respect
on the score of validity, and are not to be dismissed as the
mere deliverances of irresponsible instinct, should be
both. Not even with regard to classes of actions does the
moral sense deliver itself in unmistakable terms. Spartan
children were taught to steal; chastity was unknown among
the Turks, truth among the Cretans.
Far from unanimous in regard to . classes of actions,
the deliverances of the moral sense are often chaotic in
their application to particular actions. In this connection
it is significant that, where people do differ in their judgments
of the morality of particular actions, or communities
in their estimates of the morality of particular modes of
conduct, it is always by an appeal to the consequences of
the action or conduct in question that one party invokes
superiority for its own judgment.
III. THE DELIVERANCES OF THE
MORAL SENSE CONSIDERED IN
THEIR BEARING UPON THE
WELFARE AND PROGRESS OF
SOCIETY
The Moral Sense Related to Social Need. But the
moral sense view is not so readily to be disposed offes these
are made
arguments might at first sight suggest. Attempts
to show that the deliverances of the moral sense are not
as irresponsible as they appear, by pointing to the fact
that they arc usually directed to the preservation of the
social structure and the promotion of the welfare of the
community.
This view, that the moral sense has a social reference,
clearly embodies an important truth. It rightly points
out that morality does not and cannot be expected to
consist in obedience to an unchanging code of rules, if
only because the communities whose conduct morality
governs are not themselves unchanging. Thus the deliver*
ances of the moral sense vary in different societies, because