The Moral Proofs of

The Moral Proofs of Theism IN the present lecture I intend to examine what seem to me to be the most important of the arguments which profess to show that morality reveals something on the basis of which a metaphysician, if he knows his business, is bound to erect a theistic conclusion. Since the hinterland of morality, as opposed to its central provinces, is of debateable extent, I shall try, so far as I can, to argue from what is indisputably moral. Again, I should like to give notice that I shall not try, in the present lecture, to revise (still less to unsay) what was concluded in the last. I shall assume now, that value and existence cannot be shown, in the abstract, to be inseparable. That type of axiological metaphysics is renounced. I shall also assume that validity is ultimate and sui generis, not derivative from general metaphysics or from anything else. With regard to ethics this last assertion means that all appeals in matters of ethical standards must be made to ethics itself. That is not to say that ethical ideas are infallible, or that they approach infallibility more closely than other ideas. It is simply to say that if these standards falter or fail, no other standards have the right to supplant them. If ethics boggles there is either no remedy or the remedy lies in a better ethics.