The philosophical intuitionist who accepts more than one ultimate moral rule must face the possibility that he will meet with a conflict of the higher intuitions to which he has had recourse. Shall his intuitions be those recommending a rational self-interest and a rational benevolence? Can he be sure that the two are necessarily in accord? Can there be a rational adjustment of the claims of each? Not if there be no court of appeal to which both intuitions are subject. [Footnote: With his usual candor, SIDGWICK admits this difficulty. He leaves it unresolved. See, _The Methods of Ethics_, in the concluding chapter.] Furthermore, between the philosophical and the dogmatic intuitionist serious differences of opinion may be expected to arise. He who makes, let us say, benevolence the supreme law naturally allows to other intuitions, such as justice and veracity, but a derivative authority. It appears, then, that there may be occasions on which they are not valid. To some famous intuitionists this has seemed to be a pernicious doctrine. "We are," writes Bishop Butler, "constituted so as to condemn falsehood, unprovoked violence, injustice, and to approve of benevolence to some preferably to others, abstracted from all consideration, which conduct is likeliest to produce an overbalance of happiness or misery." [Footnote: Dissertations appended to the "Analogy," II, _Of the Nature of Virtue_. Cf. DUGALD STEWART, _Outlines of Moral Philosophy_, Part 2, Sec 348.] Butler thought that justice should be done though the heavens fall; the philosophical intuitionist must maintain that the danger of bringing down the heavens is never to be lost sight of. But this doctrine that there are intuitions and intuitions, some ultimately authoritative and others not so, raises the whole question of the validity of intuitions. How are we to distinguish those that are always valid from others? By intuition? Intuition appears to be discredited. And if it is proper to demand proof that justice should be done and the truth spoken, why may one not demand proof that men should be prudent and benevolent? One may talk of "an immediate discernment of the nature of things by the understanding" in the one case as in the other. If error is possible there, why not here? 94. THE VALUE OF MORAL INTUITIONS.--It would not be fair to close this chapter on intuitionism, an ethical theory competing with others for our approval, without emphasizing the value of the role played by the moral intuitions.