I shall not here criticise Locke's theory so far as it is common to other utilitarian systems of ethics, but shall simply content myself with pointing out that its influence on subsequent writers has seldom, if ever, been sufficiently recognized. The theological foundation, however, on which it rests, and which is peculiar among the more prominent moralists of modern times to Locke and Paley, is open to an objection so grave and obvious, that it is curious it did not occur to the authors themselves. If what is right and wrong, good and evil, depends solely on the Will of God, how can we speak of God Himself as good? Goodness, as one of the Divine attributes, would then simply mean the conformity of God to His own Will. An elder contemporary of Locke, Ralph Cudworth, so clearly saw the difficulties and contradictions involved in this view of the nature and origin of morality, that he devotes a considerable portion of his _Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality_ (which, however, was not published till 1731) to its refutation. And, possibly, Locke himself may have been conscious of some inconsistency between this theory (the ordinary one amongst the vulgar, though a comparatively rare one amongst philosophers) and the attribution of goodness to God. For, in his chapter on our knowledge of the existence of God, he never expressly mentions the attribute of goodness as pertaining to the Divine Nature, though in other parts of the _Essay_ it must be acknowledged that he incidentally does so. Moralists and philosophical theologians have generally escaped the difficulties of Locke's theory by making right or moral goodness depend not on the Will but on the Nature of God, or else by regarding it as an ultimate fact, incapable of explanation, or, lastly, by resolving it into the idea of happiness or pleasure, which itself is then regarded as an ultimate fact in the constitution of sentient beings. Two other characteristic doctrines of Locke's ethical system ought here to be mentioned, though it is impossible, within the space at my command, to discuss them. One is that morality is a science capable of demonstration. The other, which is elaborately set out in the chapter on Power in the _Essay_ (Bk. II., ch. xxi.), is that, though the Agent is free to act as he wills, the Will itself is invariably determined by motives. This solution of the well-worn controversy on the Freedom of the Will is almost identical with that offered by Hobbes before and by Hume afterwards, and is usually known as Determinism.