For if an ideal is to appeal to one, it must be the consummation of one's own natural tendencies; but the current of Man's natural tendencies is ever setting towards perdition, and the vanishing point of his heart's desires is death.

Were an ideal revealed to the Law-giver and by him presented to his fellow-men, and were the heart of Man to respond to the appeal that it made to him, the basic assumption of legalism--that of the corruption of Man's nature--would be undermined; for Man would have proved that it belonged to his nature to turn towards the light,--in other words, that he had a natural capacity for good.

The plain truth is that legalism is precluded, by its own first principles from appealing to any motive higher than that instinctive desire for pleasure which has as its counterpart a quasi-physical fear of pain.

It is impossible for the lawgiver to appeal to Man's better nature, to say to him: "Cannot you see for yourself that this course of action is better than that,--that love is better than hatred, mercy than cruelty, loyalty than treachery, continence than self-indulgence ?" What he can and must say to him is this, and this only; "If you obey the Law you will be rewarded.

If you disobey it you will be punished." And this he must say to him again and again.
It is true that among the many commandments which the Law sets before its votaries, there are some--the moral commandments, properly so called--which do in point of fact, and in defiance of the philosophical assumption of legalism, appeal to the better nature of Man.