Under these suppositions, moral principles not only lose their objective and solid consistency in the mass of mankind, but they also become irrevocably subject to the arbitrariness of the single individual. An individual who either has not, or asserts that he has not, a determined moral instinct, or who allows it to be smothered by some other instinct which in a normal individual is subordinate, but in him stronger, is fully justified in his immoral action so long as he is successful with it. Every individual is entirely his own master and his own judge. If man is morally good, it may be the consequence of an especially happy individual disposition, or of an especially clear perception, or of happy circumstances and influences; but it is not the consequence of a free subordination under the authority {381} of a moral law; for there is neither freedom nor an objective moral authority. The single man is but the product of a certain sum and mixture of powers of nature, acting of necessity, which may with him turn out fortunately or unfortunately. If, on the other hand, man is morally perverted, society may defend itself against his perversity; wisdom may try to convince him of the bad consequences of his perversity for himself and society; the effect of his perversity may make him sensible of the bad consequences of his actions: but there is no other objectively valid corrective of his perversity. If he is successful in his immoral action, and if he silences his conscience, this voice of the unobserved higher instinct in favor of the preferred lower--which unfortunately, as is well known, succeeds oftenest and most easily in the case of those whose perversity has become the most habitual, and in whom another grouping of instincts would be most desirable--then the whole affair is settled, and he is absolved. Let us be understood correctly. We do not say that all advocates of mechanical or monistic ethics draw these conclusions in reality; we know very well that many a man is better than his system; but it seems to us inevitable that the logical pursuit of that naturalistic principle leads to this dissolution of all solid fundamentals of moral principles, and that it is but an inconsequence, certainly worthy of honor and of notice, if all the advocates of naturalism do not profess this dissolution of all moral principles with the same cynic frankness that is shown by many of their partisans. We do not say too much, when we charge ethical naturalism with dissolution of _all_ moral principles. Let {382} us examine them, for a moment, according to the old but still fundamental division into duty, virtue, and highest good.