would know why Right is Right, why Wrong is Wrong.

Religions based on Revelation find in Revelation their basis for
morality, and for them that is Right which the Giver of the Revelation
commands, and that is Wrong which He forbids. Right is Right because
God, or a [R.][s.]hi or a Prophet, commands it, and Right rests on the
Will of a Lawgiver, authoritatively revealed in a Scripture.

Now all Revelation has two great disadvantages as a basis for morality.
It is fixed, and therefore unprogressive; while man evolves, and at a
later stage of his growth, the morality taught in the Revelation becomes
archaic and unsuitable. A written book cannot change, and many things in
the Bibles of Religion come to be out of date, inappropriate to new
circumstances, and even shocking to an age in which conscience has
become more enlightened than it was of old.

The fact that in the same Revelation as that in which palpably immoral
commands appear, there occur also jewels of fairest radiance, gems of
poetry, pearls of truth, helps us not at all. If moral teachings worthy
only of savages occur in Scriptures containing also rare and precious
precepts of purest sweetness, the juxtaposition of light and darkness
only produces moral chaos. We cannot here appeal to reason or judgment
for both must be silent before authority; both rest on the same ground.
"Thus saith the Lord" precludes all argument.

Let us take two widely accepted Scriptures, both regarded as
authoritative by the respective religions which accept them as coming
from a Divine Preceptor or through a human but illuminated being, Moses
in the one case, Manu in the other. I am, of course, well aware that
in both cases we have to do with books which may contain traditions of