of conduct. The psychology of this school of intellectualists does not extend further than to show that man knows a system of objective relations called moral, but what it is that binds his actions to this known rule they do not examine. Morality, so far as it implies a reasoned feeling, or a feeling reason, or whatever other term best expresses the warmth of passion which man feels for his duty, was not known to this intellectual school. When sanctions were desired, appeal could be made to the rewards and penalties annexed to actions by the great Lawgiver. Yet in so far as these penalties are external, it is open to the subject to disobey on condition of taking the consequences, as J. S. Mill professed himself ready to do in defiance of an unjust Deity. The moral law, however, must be one so intimately connected with the nature of the self, that the subject may as well attempt to escape from himself as from it. That the knowledge of the law seems to be sufficient, is because there is implied in it a feeling of its value. It is tacitly assumed that value can be expressed in terms of knowledge, and described; that it is a relation between objects rather than between objects and a feeling self. These non-psychological systems, then, in so far as they touch the question of authority at all, must result in a hedonism like Cumberland's, or an unconscious rationalism like that of the Cambridge school.
When we apply this analysis to the interpretation of the early moralists, we see that the first period was taken up by the non-psychological systems. The traditional reverence for morality, born of the time when theology was its firm support, persisted after the power of the church had been shaken. Though freed from its dependence upon any one church or authoritative interpretation, ethics had not yet ventured to stand wholly on its own merits. The will or nature of God was still its basis, and a basis as yet unshaken by prevailing skepticism. Men descended from theology and metaphysics as the more sure, to ethics and conduct as the less firmly established. The external authority of the law had not yet been questioned enough to drive men back on their ultimate
