jective criterion beyond the conception which "right reasoning" or "the good man" might form for him- self of happiness as the end of life. The practical question in Ethic however is, as already shown, whe- ther there is or is not such a subjective practical criterion.
4. If we turn to history proper we find a corre- sponding fact. Neither in Greece nor in Rome was there a spiritual power, in the usual sense of the term, side by side with or above the temporal, as Auguste Comte has shown. The development of the mind of man had not reached that stage at which the subjective side of practical judgment could make itself manifest, either in the shape of a theoretical philosophy or in that of a political constitution. It is only dawning in the Aristotelian doctrine of πζοαί- ζεσις. It is however the most prominent feature in the writings of St. Paul, the point on which he most earnestly insists: "Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind" ( Rom. xiv. 5); and "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin" ( Rom. xiv. 23). St. Paul is the law reformer of rising Christianity, as the writers of the Epistle to the Hebrews and of the Fourth Gospel and First Epistle of St. John are its religious philosophers, or reformers in theology proper. He substituted the law of Conscience for the law of ordi- nances, the status of grace, of faith, of sonship, for the status of servitude to an external authority; free grace and free obedience being two expressions for one and the same thing, namely, the relation between the subject and the sovereign, between man and God. The doctrine of a conscience which could not be bound by temporal laws was the specific shape in which the subjective aspect of choice made its im-
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Publication Information: Book Title: The Theory of Practice: An Ethical Enquiry in Two Books. Volume: 1. Contributors: Shadworth H. Hodgson - author. Publisher: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer. Place of Publication: London. Publication Year: 1870. Page Number: 23.
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