Our present-day knowledge prompts the adoption of a middle course between the two theories.
It may be affection, or it may be fear, which prompts the survivor to feed and tend his dead; in general no doubt it is a mixture of both feelings.
Pity he finds to be grief for the calamity of others, arising from imagination of the like calamity befalling oneself; what we admire with seeming disinterestedness as beautiful (pulchrum) is really " pleasure in promise "; when men are not immediately seeking present pleasure, they desire power as a means to future pleasure, and thus have a derivative delight in the exercise of power that prompts to what we call benevolent action.
To this extent monism is justified; but it becomes mischievous if it prompts us to ignore important differences in facts as they present themselves to our intelligence.
As regards natural law, he teaches that God has implanted in the human mind a knowledge of its immutable general principles; and not only knowledge, but a disposition, to which he applies the peculiar scholastic name synderesis,' that unerringly prompts to the realization of these principles in conduct, and protests against their violation.
