Secondly, that while there is diversity as to many points, there is
none in its judgments as to the great body of virtues and vices of
human life. As to all the leading qualities of character and conduct
there is full and universal agreement. With respect to all the cardinal
virtues, such as justice, kindness, veracity, love, courage, fidelity,
generosity, the moral judgments approve them as the magnet owns its
pole, in all the multi-form relations and offices of life. On the other
hand, injustice, falsehood, enmity, treachery, cruelty, adultery,
theft, murder and similar dispositions and acts in their thousand forms
of unmistakable manifestation, are universally condemned. There is no
question anywhere around our globe that one who deliberately kills his
mother or mangles his father, or tortures the innocent or defrauds his
friend, is a wrong-doer, of abhorrent guilt. Over almost the entire
broad field of moral obligation there is a consentient, clear and
consistent judgment by the moral sense of man in all ages and places.
It is only along dividing lines, wider or narrower as they may be,
that, by reason of the fainter presence of the moral element or the
complexity of the relations concerned, the moral judgments exhibit this
diversity or act with less assured and certain accuracy. The perplexity
and difference find place only in limited degree and on remoter points,
where the distinctions are so subtle as to require the nicest balancing
of all the complex relations and elements which develop the ethical
obligations.
If, indeed, the conscience reported entirely different codes
throughout, from bottom to top and from center to circumference, or
codes with contradictions as to the cardinal virtues and vices, then
we might well question the existence and action of a real, original
and normal faculty as actually perceiving a real moral distinction and
principle of duty. But if such diversities are found only in limited
degree, on marginal ground and in complex situations, we are simply in
the presence of a fact of great similarity of the conscience with all
the rest of the finite and fallible faculties of the human mind. Upon
a hundred points of practical morals the intelligent conscience would
be likely to agree quite as well as the judgments of men in any other
sphere of practical knowledge and life.
==Agreement in Principles.==
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