ABSTRACT
Social ends people have sought to show as reflecting a consensus of wills. The belief that there are moral values which all men accept at all times as self-evident and for which it is senseless to demand reasons, or which excite immediate and universal emotions of approval, and that therefore there is a morality, 'objective' in the sense that it is stored up somewhere in imperishable form beyond the reach of argument or the test of experience, is akin to the idea that everyone is endowed with a conscience, which is an infallible instrument for separating right from wrong. The significance of the analogy with the physical universe, regarded as representing a determinate, objective and predictable order, is that it suggests the existence of an autonomous moral order created by a force or authority beyond man, just as is the universe itself.
