_Paley not a Moralist._
Schemes of conduct, grounded on calculations of self-interest; or on
the average consequences of actions, supposing them _general_; form a
branch of Political Economy, to which let all due honour be given.
Their utility is not here questioned. But however estimable within
their own sphere, such schemes, or any one of them in particular, may
be, they do not belong to Moral Science, to which both in kind and
purpose, they are in all cases _foreign_, and, when substituted for
it, _hostile_. Ethics, or the _Science_ of Morality, does indeed in no
wise exclude the consideration of _action_; but it contemplates the
same in its originating spiritual _source_, without reference to space
or time or sensible existence. Whatever springs out of _the perfect
law of freedom_, which exists only by its unity with the will of God,
its inherence in the Word of God, and its communion with the Spirit of
God--_that_ (according to the principles of Moral Science) is GOOD--it
is light and righteousness and very truth. Whatever seeks to separate
itself from the Divine Principle, and proceeds from a false centre in
the agent's particular will, is EVIL--a work of darkness and
contradiction. It is sin and essential falsehood. Not the outward
deed, constructive, destructive, or neutral,--not the deed as a
possible object of the senses,--is the object of Ethical Science. For
this is no compost, _collectorium_ or inventory of single duties; nor
does it seek in the multitudinous sea, in the pre-determined waves,
and tides and currents of _nature_ that freedom, which is exclusively
an attribute of _spirit_. Like all other pure sciences, whatever it
enunciates, and whatever it concludes, it enunciates and concludes
_absolutely_. Strictness is its essential character: and its first
Proposition is, _Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in
one point, he is guilty of all_. For as the Will or Spirit, the Source
and Substance of Moral Good, is one and all in every part; so must it
be the totality, the whole articulated series of single acts, taken as
unity, that can alone, in the severity of science, be recognised as
the proper counterpart and adequate representative of a good Will. Is
it in this or that limb, or not rather in the whole body, the entire
_organismus_ that the law of life reflects itself?--Much less, then,
can the law of the Spirit work in fragments.