CHAPTER VIII DUTY AND VIRTUE. § 68. The obligations, both active and passive, laid upon us in the moral law are duties. Duty is the name of a rela Every duty is because of tion, and so requires two terms. something due from one person to another. It is the relation of debtor to creditor. Honesty, honor requires the payment of debt. The commercial meaning of dues or debts is merely a specific application of the essential sense inherent in these terms in their general application to every phase of human obligation.1 To withhold what is due another is a violation of his right, is an unwarranted interference in his liberty of action, is a trespass, and is forbidden by the moral law. But to 1 Duty is an abstract term; due is the concrete, meaning owed as a debt, from O. Fr., deu, pp. of devoir, from Lat. debere, to owe. Debt is also from Lat. debere, to owe, debita, a sum due. Ought is an old preterite of to owe, to possess (another's property), hence to be in debt. Shakespeare sometimes plays upon this early meaning of to owe; e.g. : "I owe you much, and, like a wilful youth, - Merchant of Venice, Act i, sc. 1, 1. 146. To pay that duty which you truly owe - King John, Act ii, sc. 1, 1. 247. With Cicero officium means a duty performed, a service rendered, a function fulfilled as an object of moral obligation. See De Officiis, i, 3. He uses honestum in the wide sense of what is honorable, decent, virtuous. "Honestum aut ipsa virtus est, aut res gesta virtute; honestum a virtute divelli non potest." forbid non-payment is to command payment. Pay thy dues. Owe no man anything. We must pay what we owe. We ought to render to every man his own, that is, what we owe him. These are but varied expressions of the one injunction, Trespass not, Be thou just, Do thy duty. Ethics may fairly be defined as the science of duty.1 § 69. Right and duty are coextensive, merely different aspects of the same notion. Right belongs to the action, and is conformity to law. Duty belongs to the agent, and is subjection to law. Hence they imply each other. That whatever is duty is right, is quite evident. That whatever is right is duty, is readily seen. For, each case as it arises is subsumed under the law, or under rules, maxims of conduct, deduced from the law, and a conclusion is drawn as to what is right, what ought to be done. Now from given premises, if the terms be unambiguous and the reasoning correct, only one conclusion can follow, certainly not two or more essentially different. Therefore, in every conceivable situation there is for the moment one and only one course that is right; and this action alone being right it ought or 1 Duty, properly, literally, is a function of persons only, they acting in the light of conscience. Yet a horse is said to be doing its duty when it willingly does its work; and a clock when it keeps good time. Each is fulfilling its function, but to speak of this as duty is figúrative speech. Brutes, since they are without conscience and personality, have no duties, and accordingly relative to them we have, strictly speaking, no rights, but merely property claims. We claim and enforce their service, and take their lives for food. Those that are a nuisance we drive out or kill, as weeds, by virtue of eminent domain. But relative to brutes, they having rights, we have duties; to our domestic animals, especially, food, shelter and mild usage are due. A pain-giving trespass is cruelty. Hunting, fishing, merely for sport, is a relic of barbarism, is cruel and wrong. Unwarranted vivisection is a crime. See supra, § 24, note; also, for the views of the present writer, an article on "The Moral Aspects of Vivisection," in The North American Review, for March, 1885. owes to be done. When an action is clearly conceived to be right, that action and that alone is duty.1 It is a corollary that duty is but another name for obligation, whose measure is found in the full application of the whole law to the whole life. Also it follows that duties never conflict. Often we are confused and in doubt as to the particular obligation, but of two possible acts, one being right, the other is wrong. There is no "divided duty." Moreover, it is wrong, ex vi termini, to do less than one ought to do; also it is wrong to do more; for this is an expenditure that is due elsewhere; for example, to overpay a 1 66 Le devoir et le droit sont frères. Leur mère commune est la liberté. Ils naissent le même jour, ils se développent et ils périssent ensemble. On pourrait même dire que le droit et le devoir ne font qu'un, et sont le même être envisagé de deux côtés différents. Qu'est-ce, en effet, que mon droit à votre respect, sinon le devoir que vous avez de me respecter, parce que je suis un être libre ? Mais vous-même vous êtes un être libre, et le fondement de mon droit et de votre devoir devient pour vous le fondement d'un droit égal, et en moi d'un égal devoir." - COUSIN, Du Vrai du Beau et du Bien, Douzième Leçon, § 4. In Lieber's biography we find that his life "was a continual exposition of his favorite motto: 'No right without its duties; no duty without its rights.' Whence came it? A letter to Judge Thayer, in 1869, gives the Genesis of this Deuteronomy. Lieber, bound for Greece, with his freedom-loving comrades, in 1822, saw at the end of the schooner's yard-arm a little flame. "That's bad indeed,' said the captain, who explained that the flames (electric lights) were called Castor and Pollux, or St. Elmo's fire. If both appeared, it foretold fine sailing; if only one, foul weather. 'I thought,' says Lieber, this is like right and duty; both together, and all is well; right alone, despotism; duty alone, slavery.'" - PRESIDENT GILMAN, in The Century for Sept. '83, p. 793. Patrick Henry, in his famous argument in the British Debt Cause, delivered in Richmond, Va., Nov., 1791, says: 66 Rights and obligations are correspondent, coextensive, and inseparable; they must exist together or not at all. . . . If then the obligation be gone, what is become of the correspondent right? They are mutually gone." -Wм. WIRT HENRY, Patrick Henry, vol. iii, p. 621. Some writers condition rights on duties, reversing the view taken in this treatise. Thus Trendelenburg; also Lotze, Pract. Phil., § 32. See also Hyslop, Ethics, ch. x. bill. Sometimes one ought to do all he can; he is never bound to do more, but frequently less. The essential identity of justice and right, and of injustice and trespass, has already been indicated.1 Hence it sufficiently appears that, right and duty being equivalent, justice and duty are likewise equivalent terms. In a didactic treatment of ethics, it is far less important to mark the shades of distinction among these synonymous terms, a right, right, justice, equity, mercy, obligation, duty, than it is to show distinctly that, as to their essence, they are one and the same, and that a violation of any one is a wrong, an injustice, a trespass. § 70. An action conforming to moral law is a virtuous action. This qualification implies a contrary inclination overcome by will. It is the doing of justice, the performance of duty, in a particular case, wherein the agent was tempted to disregard obligation by an opposed desire, against which there was a voluntary struggle ending in its subjection. A virtuous person is one with whom the voluntary suppression of wrong desire is habitual, he subjecting himself uniformly to the law of duty, and thus molding his character anew. Under the law of habit, that our faculties acquire facility and strength by exercise, the righteous desires of the virtuous person prevail more and more uniformly, while their opposites, denied the nourishment of gratification, become weaker and suffer atrophy; until, finally, when and although all conflict, all struggle, has ceased, the victor, because of his victory, is dubbed a perfectly virtuous person. The abstract name of this mark is virtue.2 In general, 1 See supra, § 63. For Kant's doctrine of duty, see infra, § 86. 2 From Lat. virtus, strength, vigor, valor; cognate with vir, man, manhood; equivalent to άperý, prowess, the Homeric notion of worth, cognate with "Apns, Mars, the god of war. Thus virtue implies opposition to be overcome, exertion of strength, vigor in overcoming, a struggle going on. virtue is the conformity of will to the law discerned by practical reason or conscience. This definition implies that all subjective activities are regulated, duly coördinated and subordinated, so that each fulfills its normal function; thus enabling objective activities to attain their highest efficiency. Primarily it indicates the subjection of the craving to the giving desires; secondarily, the bringing of the members of each class into harmonious coöperation. Otherwise there is a continual strife, the lust of the flesh against the spirit and disorderly preferences of each, that is incompatible with perfected virtue. Such entire harmony is perhaps an unattainable ideal, but in human nature there is a native impulse toward it, and an ability to approximate it. Virtue, then, is a proficiency in willing what is conformed to practical reason, developed from the state of natural potentiality by practical action.1 In a certain narrowed sense virtue is synonymous with chastity. More properly and widely the factitive forms to chasten, to chastise, from Lat. castus, pure, mean to purify, to correct, by reproof or penalty. "Whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth." Cf. to castigate. As chastity implies purity, so virtue implies victory. Too often "on vante la vertu, mais on la laisse se morfondre." - GABORIAU. Too often its majestic severity chills us; "probitas laudatur et alget."-JUVENAL. Yet, as said by Plato, "virtue is the health and beauty and well-being of the soul, while vice is its disease, weakness and deformity."- Republic, bk. iv, 444, Step. The Lady, in Milton's Comus, 1. 210 sq., beset by "a thousand fantasies," says: "These thoughts may startle well, but not astound The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended By a strong siding champion, Conscience. O welcome, pure-eyed Faith; white-handed Hope, And thou unblemished form of Chastity! I see ye visibly, and now believe That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill Are but as slavish officers of vengeance, Would send a glistering guardian, if need were, Was 1 deceived, or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night?" 1 This last definition is according to Aristotle, Nic. Eth., bk. ii, ch. 6, with whom aperη is a is, a habitus. Virtue has been characterized as |