ABSTRACT
Ethical systems may be distinguished as regards the motives which they assume for moral action, and as regards the ends which they set before it. The ethics of feeling derives morality from feelings and emotions; that of the understanding from reflection; that of the reason either from rational insight which passes the limits of reflection, but remains a product of experience, or from rational intuition prior to all experience. The ethics of feeling finds the beginnings of ethics in the souls of lower animals, and the ethics of the understanding finds at least the germ of morality there. Ethical systems of the first class may be called authoritative or heteronomous; those of the second class autonomous. Where self-love is made the exclusive motive and sole end of human action, as with the Sophists in antiquity and Mandeville in modern English ethics, the intention is to call in question the very existence of moral laws.
