Of the four principles of morals which Locke employs side by side, and in alternation, without determining their exact relations--the reason, the will of God, the general good (and, deduced from this, the approval of our fellow-men), self-love--the latter two possess only an accessory significance, while the former two co-operate in such a way that the one determines the content of the good and the other confirms it and gives it binding authority. The Christian religion does the reason a threefold service--it gives her information concerning our duty, which she could have reached herself, indeed, without the help of revelation, but not with the same certitude and rapidity; it invests the good with the majesty of absolute obligation by proclaiming it as the command of God; it increases the motives to morality by its doctrines of immortality and future retribution. Although Locke thus intimately joins virtue with earthly joy and eternal happiness, and although he finds in the expectation of heaven or hell a welcome support for the will in its conflict with the passions, we must remember that he values this regard for the results and rewards of virtue only as a subsidiary motive, and does not esteem it as in itself ethical: eternal happiness forms, as it were, the "dowry" of virtue, which adds to its true value in the eyes of fools and the weak, though it constitutes neither its essence nor its basis. Virtue seems to the wise man beautiful and valuable enough even without this, and yet the commendations of philosophers gain for her but few wooers. The crowd is attracted to her only when it is made clear to it that virtue is the "best policy."