Note 28 — Chapter XIV · BRITISH FREETHOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

But Hobbes passed in two strides to the position that natural morality is a set of demonstrable inferences as to what adjustments promote general well-being; and further that there is no practical code of right and wrong apart from positive social law.28 He thus practically introduced once for all into modern Christendom the fundamental dilemma of rationalistic ethics, not only positing the problem for his age,29 but anticipating it as handled in later times.30