local motions in the organs, taken on from ‘the motion of particles’ that constitute ‘the whole world.’  All the more, therefore, must there exist a superior power of Intellection and Knowledge of a different nature from sense, a power not terminating in mere seeming and appearance only, but in the reality of things, and reaching to the comprehension of what really and absolutely is; whose objects are the immutable and eternal essences and natures of things, and their unchangeable relations to one another.  These Rationes or Verities of things are intelligible. only; are all comprehended in the eternal mind or intellect of the Deity, and from Him derived to our ’particular intellects.’  They are neither arbitrary nor phantastical—­neither alterable by Will nor changeable by Opinion.

Such eternal and immutable Verities, then, the moral distinctions of Good and Evil are, in the pauses of the general argument, declared to be.  They, ’as they must have some certain natures which are the actions or souls of men,’ are unalterable by Will or Opinion.  ’Modifications of Mind and Intellect,’ they are as much more real and substantial things than Hard, Soft, Hot, and Cold, modifications of mere senseless matter—­and even so, on the principles of the atomical philosophy, dependent on the soul for their existence—­as Mind itself stands prior in the order of nature to Matter.  In the mind they are as ‘anticipations of morality’ springing up, not indeed ’from certain rules or propositions arbitrarily printed on the soul as on a book,’ but from some more inward and vital Principle in intellectual beings, as such whereby these have within themselves a natural determination to do some things and to avoid others.

The only other ethical determinations made by Cudworth may thus be summarized:—­Things called naturally Good and Due are such as the intellectual nature obliges to immediately, absolutely, and perpetually, and upon no condition of any voluntary action done or omitted intervening; things positively Good and Due are such as are in themselves indifferent, but the intellectual nature obliges to them accidentally or hypothetically, upon condition, in the case of a command, of some voluntary act of another person invested with lawful authority, or of one’s self, in the case of a specific promise.  In a positive command (as of the civil ruler), what obliges is only the intellectual nature of him that is commanded, in that he recognizes the lawful authority of him that commands, and so far determines and modifies his general duty of obedience as to do an action immaterial in itself for the sake of the formality of yielding obedience to lawfully constituted authority.  So, in like manner, a specific promise, in itself immaterial and not enjoined by natural justice, is to be kept for the sake of the formality of keeping faith, which is enjoined.

Cudworth’s work, in which these are nearly all the ethical allusions, gives no scope for a summary under the various topics.