One of those who had gone further than our Deists felt disposed to question all “immutable morality” original “dictates of conscience.”  “I doubt,” said he, “whether those dictates are any clearer than those dogmas of ‘natural religion’ which have been so oppugned; and I judge so for the same reason,—­the endless disputes of men with regard to the source, the rule, the obligation of what they call duty; which are exactly similar to the disputes which we charge upon the Natural Religionist and the Christian.”  And here he ran through half a dozen of the two score theories which the history of ethics presents, rare work with Plato and Aristotle, Hobbes, Cudworth, Mandeville, and Bentham.  “Meantime,” he concluded, “we do see, in point of fact, that the moral rule is most flexible, and to an indeterminate degree the creature of association, custom, and education, so that I am inclined to think that that alone is obligatory which the positive laws and institutions of any society render binding.”  “So that” cried Harrington, “a man both may and ought to thieve in ancient Sparta, may expose his parents in Hindostan, and commit infanticide in China!” “It is a pity,” archly whispered the Italian guest, “that this gentleman was not born in China.”

“It is a respectable, but very old speculation,” said Harrington, “of which many ancient moralists avowed themselves the advocates, but of which it is only fair to admit that Plato and many other heathens were heartily ashamed.”

It seemed as if the bathos of theological and ethical absurdity could not lie deeper; but I was mistaken.  The admirer of Mr. Atkinson declared with great modesty that he thought, as did his favorite author, that the whole world had been mad on the subject of theology and morality;—­that the prime error consisted in the superficial notion of a Personal Deity, and the foolish attribution of the notion of “sin” and “crime” to human motives and conduct, instead of regarding the former as a name of an absolutely unknown cause of the entire phenomena of the universe, and the latter as part of a series of rigidly necessary antecedents and consequents, for which man is no more to be either blamed or praised than the sun for shining or the avalanche for falling; he added, that only in this way could man attain peace.  “As Mr. Atkinson beautifully says, ’What a hopeful and calming influence has such a contemplation of nature!  At this moment it is not I, but the nature within me, that dictates my speech and guides my pen.  I am what I am.  I cannot alter my will, or be other than what I am, and cannot deserve either reward or punishment.’  But I feel with him, ’We may preach these things, and men may think us mad or something worse.’” (Pp. 190, 191.)

“And perhaps justly,” said Harrington, with a laugh, “for nature has surely, after so many thousands of years, let you know what her law is, and you say that that law is necessary and irreversible, and yet you strive to alter it!  You had better leave men to their necessary absurdities.”