In morals, as in physics, statistics are only the point from which science sets out; it is only after having well observed facts, and having verified them, that we have to discuss the questions which they raise, and the further ultimate facts which the facts already ascertained contain and reveal. The fact of human morality, such as I have just described it in its three constituent elements, the Moral Law, Duty, and Liberty, cannot fail to suggest these two questions: Whence proceeds the moral law, and whence is its authority? What is the sense, and what the ultimate result to the moral being himself, of the fulfilment or violation of his duty; that is to say, of the use which he makes of his liberty? No philosophical system can either suppress or elude these questions; they present themselves to the mind of man as soon as he directs his attention to the moral character of man's nature. I propose to consider in succession the three constituent elements of this great truth, so as to determine rightly its source and bearing. {59} Moral law has neither been invented by man, nor does it spring from any human convention; man, by acknowledging it, admits that he has not created it, that he cannot abolish or change it. Political and civil laws are diverse and ever varying; they depend in a great measure upon time, place, social circumstances, or human will; when men adopt or reject them, they do so with the feeling that they are the masters of them, to deal with them accordingly as their interests or their fancies suggest. But when a law presents itself to them in the form of a moral law, they feel that this is not dependent on them, that it takes its source and derives its authority elsewhere than from their own opinion or volition. They may mistake in rendering or in refusing homage to a particular precept of conduct; they may attach to laws a moral value which they do not intrinsically possess, or pass unnoticed the really moral character of another law, and the obligations which it imposes upon them; but wherever they believe that they perceive the character of a moral law, they bow before it as before something which does not emanate from them, and before a power of a different nature from man's. {60}