Chapter 1

The first moral law

3. It is clear that one notion sometimes depends on another more general notion, just as notions of species depend on and presuppose the notion of their genus. For example, the notion 'human' depends on and presupposes the notion 'animal'. A series of notions, however, each of which depends on a preceding notion, must end somewhere or continue to infinity; a final notion must ultimately be reached on which all others, supposing it, depend. This ultimate notion must be independent of all others; no other notion must precede it, and it must be impossible to go beyond it.
If the moral laws in our mind are simply notions, we must come, in a series of these notions and laws, to a final law. This final law can also be called first because the words 'last' and 'first' express two relationships of a single term: what is last in the series is first when the series is reversed.

4. The first law, therefore, is the first idea or notion with which we form moral judgments. But the study of ideas shows that in the human being there is an idea, preceding all others, with which all judgments are formed(1). Granted this, it must follow that this first idea, the principle and source of all judgments, is also the principle and source of moral judgments, and hence the first moral law, the object of our present enquiry.
The human mind forms all judgments with the idea of universal being, which is innate in the human spirit as the form of intelligence. I call it the form of intelligence because an analysis of human thoughts shows them to be informed by it in such a way that thought is inconceivable without it. Thus any spirit devoid of it lacks intelligence. Universal being, therefore, must be the first moral law, the notion we use to produce all moral judgments.

5. We note that all things and parts of things, together with their perfections, are ultimately acts of being. Being, actuated and limited in different ways, receives different names in different things. The word being means simply the first activity and every activity. To say something 'is' is to say it acts. Nothing is, unless it acts; it must act in order to be; what a thing does to posit and maintain its being, is an action. Thus every action is contained in the notion of being, which indicates and measures everything; without knowing what being is, we cannot 'measure' different beings, that is, 'distinguish', 'judge', or 'perceive them intellectively'. I cannot perceive any being intellectively unless I say to myself that it is a being, that is, has the activity of its being determined in a definite mode and at a definite level. I can make no judgment about it if I do not first understand what is meant by the word being in general, which I always pronounce in making a judgment.

6. I have explained this at much greater length in my work on the origin of ideas, to which I refer the reader. However, we still have to see how we are capable of making judgments about moral good and evil when we only have knowledge of being. Such a problem may seem strange to anyone who has never considered the matter. Obviously, if we know what universal being is, we can understand what particular beings are. But can we understand what good and moral good are, when there is apparently no connection between beings and moral actions? I need to answer this question in detail by comparing the being of things with moral good and evil, the very purpose of this book.

What has been said so far, however, should be enough to show in general that the notion under discussion fulfils the role we have described, although we may still not be able to explain how this comes about. Certainly, in the light of what has been said, we are not justified in rejecting such a truth simply because we cannot explain it. To reject it, we would have to reject the proofs used to show that the idea of being is the rule of all judgments(2), the definition I have given of law as a rule of moral judgments. But as long as these two points are certain, the third also must be certain: the first rule for all judgments is the first rule for moral judgments and hence the first moral law.

7. Because the idea of universal being constitutes the light of reason(3), the moral law is expressed fairly well in the formula, 'Follow reason'. But it would be more accurate to say, 'In all that you do, follow the light of reason'. This is the most general formula in ethics and expresses the first law more accurately than 'Follow reason' because human reason is a faithful guide only if it follows its light. Reason is the faculty with which the human spirit applies the idea of being - reasoning is simply the application of the idea(4). The human spirit, however, is fallible, and often errs when making this application. Reason therefore is fallible because it is the power of a limited, fallible spirit. On the other hand, the light of reason cannot err because it does not depend on the human spirit. Nor does the spirit acquire it by its own efforts. It is innate, breathed into the spirit by the creator. Being, the light illuminating the spirit and indeed making it intelligent, is absolutely unchangeable, eternal and necessary; it is the truth itself, as I have shown at length(5). Thus it is not reason that constitutes the supreme moral law but the idea of being whose light is used by reason. When reason adheres to the light, it is accurate; when it abandons the light, it errs.

This observation alone eliminates many of the equivocations and errors of other theories, which make human beings either gods or animals. If reason, which is the power using the light, is confused with the light, it falsely takes on the excellence and infallibility of the light. Reason becomes proud and self-reliant; the human being becomes both legislator and God in the moral universe. On the other hand, to note the fallibility of reason but ignore its divine element (the idea of being) is to debase human beings by denying them a true moral state. They are either condemned to perpetual error, or to groping in the darkness for the truth they can never be certain of finding.

I cannot enlarge on these extreme errors in this brief study, but when necessary I will indicate how they are to be avoided.

Notes

(1) I have proved this basic truth in The Origin of Thought, where I demonstrated that the notion of being has different uses, that in these uses it becomes successively all the principles of reasoning, and that by means of these principles every other reasoning is ultimately formed. To understand how the first principles of reasoning are simply the application of the idea of being, see op. cit. 558-573 and Certainty, 1112 ss.

(2) The Origin of Thought, 398-412

(3) The Origin of Thought, 480-482; Certainty, 1112-1136

(4) Certainty, 1040-1377

(5) ibid.