Classic intuitional theories will be found developed in:  Price, Review of the Chief Questions and Difficulties of Morals (1757), Shaftesbury, An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit (1699).  F. Hutcheson, An Inquiry Concerning Moral Good and Evil (1725).  Joseph Butler, Fifteen Sermons upon Human Nature, ii, iii (1726).  J. Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory (1885).

Criticisms of the intuitional theories will be found in:  S. E. Mezes, Ethics, chap.  III; Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, chap.  XVI, sec. 3; F. Paulsen, System of Ethics, part ii, chap.  V, sec. 4; H. Spencer, Data of Ethics, chap.  II, sec. 14; chap.  IV, sec. 20; Muirhead, Elements of Ethics, secs. 32-35.  H. Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil, book I, chap.  IV.  W. Fite, Introductory Study of Ethics,

PART II

THE THEORY OF MORALITY

CHAPTER VII

THE BASIS OF RIGHT AND WRONG

Historical knowledge without critical insight leads to moral nihilism, the conviction of the pre-Socratic Sophists that, since every time and people has its own standards, there is no real objective right and wrong.  Morality is seen to be not a fixed code sent readymade from heaven, but a set of habits and intuitions that have had a natural origin and development.  Our particular moral code is perceived to be but one out of many, our type of conscience psychologically on the same level with the strange, and to us perverted, sense of duty of alien races.  How can we judge impartially between our standards and those of the Fiji Islanders?  What warrant have we for saying that our code is a better one than theirs?  Or how do we know that the whole thing is not superstition?

What is the nature of that intrinsic goodness upon which ultimately all valuations rest?

As a matter of fact, underneath the manifold disagreements as to good and bad, there is a deep stratum of absolute certainty.  It is only in the more complex and delicate matters that doubt arises; all men share in those elementary perceptions of good and bad that make up the bulk of human valuation.  To men everywhere it is an evil to be in severe physical pain or to be maimed in body, to be shut away from air, from food, from other people.  It is a good to taste an appetizing dish, to exercise when well and rested, to hear harmonious music, to feel the sweet emotion of love.  The fact that men agree upon judgments does not prove them true; but these are not judgments, they are perceptions. [Footnote:  Or affections.  Let no one quarrel about the psychological terms used; the only important matter is to note the fact, however it be phrased, that “good” and “bad” in their basic usage are descriptive terms.  A toothache is bad just as indisputably as the sky is blue.  The word “bad” has a definite meaning, just as the word “blue” has;