---
title: Burke on Moral Order
tags: [Quote, Conservatism]
summary: The awful Author of our being is the author of our place in the order of existence...
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> The awful Author of our being is the author of our place in the
> order of existence; and that having disposed and marshalled us by
> a divine tactic, not according to our will, but according to His,
> He has, in and by that disposition, virtually subjected us to act
> the part which belongs to the part assigned to us.  We have
> obligations to mankind at large, which are not in consequence of
> any special voluntary pact.  They arise from the relation of man
> to man, and the relation of man to God, which relations are not a
> matter of choice....When we marry, the choice is voluntary, but
> the duties are not a matter of choice....The instincts which give
> rise to this mysterious process of nature are not of our making.
> But out of physical causes, unknown to us, perhaps unknowable,
> arise moral duties, which, as we are able perfectly to
> comprehend, we are bound indispensably to perform.

---Edmund Burke, "Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs," *Works*, III, p. 79, quoted in Russell Kirk, *The Conservative Mind*, p. 31.