I freely admit that I would not have been so quick to give my assent to the hypothesis about consciousness which I have been arguing here (the detailed examination of which, if possible at all, I must leave to more informed experts) if I had not observed that it seems to shed a certain amount of light on an area which, while decidedly remote from physiology, is very relevant to us as human beings; and that this gives a certain support to the hypothesis itself. I mean that this opens up the possibility of a scientific interpretation of ethics.

In all ages and amongst all peoples self-conquest has formed the underlying basis of all virtue. This appears at once in the fact that a moral teaching always appears arrayed as a demand, ‘Thou shalt’; and it must be so, because if we consider the practical behaviour which we value as morally elevated, positively significant, or wise, the behaviour which, for reasons very variously stated, we applaud, respect or admire, we find that such behaviour, however constituted in detail, always has one thing common to it: a certain opposition to primitive desire.

Whence comes this curious contradiction, interwoven with our entire life, between ‘ I want’ and ‘Thou shalt’? It is really highly absurd and unnatural to require always of every individual that he should deny himself, suppress his primitive urges and, in short, be other than what he actually is.