What Is Right?

There is an organ in my home. As I look at the notes on that organ, I could ask, which note is good and which note is bad? Which note is right and which note is wrong? One cannot say that any particular note is right or any particular note is wrong. What makes any note right or wrong? Its correspondence to a standard. Once I have a piece of music before me, I know what I ought to do, what note I should hit, what note I ought not to hit. So too, we have a moral standard within us which is our conscience. What is good and bad is in relationship to that standard which is not of our own making.  We do not draw our own maps, and decide what the distance from Chicago to New York will be, for instance. We do not arbitrarily set our own watches. We set them by a standard outside of us. When we buy material, for example, we do not decide that a yard will be twenty-four inches instead of thirty-six inches. A good, therefore, is that which helps us in relationship to the attainment of purposes and goals and destinies which are in accordance with right reason.