On this ground,
therefore, the school was properly called Intuitional: they held that
moral ideas were received by direct vision or intuition, as it were,
not by a process of induction from particular facts.
And, in the second place, with regard to the criterion of morality,
that also (they held) was not dependent on the consequences in the
way of happiness and misery which the Utilitarians emphasised. On the
contrary, moral ideas themselves had an independent validity; they had
a worth and authority for conduct which could not be accounted for by
any consequences in which action resulted: belonging as they did to
the essence of the human spirit, they also had authority over the
conduct of man's life.
Now the ethical controversies of last century were almost entirely
about these two points and between these two opposed schools. No doubt
the two questions thus discussed did go very near to the root of the
whole matter. They pointed to the consideration of the question of
man's place in the universe and his spiritual nature as determining
the part which it was his to play in the world. They suggested, if
they did not always raise, the question whether man is entirely a
product of nature or whether he has a spiritual essence to which
nature may be subdued. But the larger issues suggested were not
followed out.
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