In this chapter I propose to discuss in a very general and, no doubt, superficial way an ancient and fundamental question in moral philosophy and then indicate how it is relevant to our approach to practical problems, some of which concern us all, and some of which are of primary importance to the medical profession.

The ancient and fundamental question is how we arrive at our moral code. Is the moral code something that we discover by pure thought to be necessarily binding, perhaps somewhat similarly to the way in which by pure thought we can see the necessity of mathematical truths? If so, are those who cannot see the correctness of the moral code we uphold to be thought of as rather like people who are bad at arithmetic or untrained in arithmetic? Or are we to think of moral truths as more like the findings of empirical science? Is it, for example, the case that we discover, by introspection or by inspection of our neighbours, that human beings are so framed that they (almost invariably) favour some types of behaviour and disfavour others rather as they (almost invariably) like and dislike the same basic flavours? Or are we to think of our moral code as rather like the highway code, or at least like the positive laws made by governments, the invention of human beings, like the wheel and the spade? On the first two of these views we may say that moral codes are discovered; the world, or human beings, being as they are, morality is a feature of the landscape to which we must adapt ourselves.