DUTY
216
DUTY
thoughts apparently never turn to superhuman
things, but who are penetrated by a secret worship of
honour, truth and right. Were this noble state of
mind brought out of its impulsive state and made to
imfold its implicit contents, it would indeed reveal a
source higher than human nature for the august au-
thority of righteousness. But it is undeniable that that
authority may be felt where it is not seen — felt as if it
were the mandate of a Perfect Will, while yet there is no
overt recognition of such a Will: i. e., conscience may
act as human, before it is discovered to be divine. To
the agent himself its whole history may seem to lie in
his own personality and his visible social relations; and
it shall nevertheless serve as his oracle, though it be
hid from him Who it is that utters it." (Martineau,
A otudy of Religion, Introduc, p. 21.) Nevertheless
it must be admitted that such persons are compara-
tively few; and they, too, testify to the implication of
another self in the intimations of consciousness; for
they, as Ladd says, "personify the conception of the
sum-total of ethical obligations, they are fain to spell
the words with capitals and swear allegiance to this
purely abstract conception. They hypostatize and
deify an abstraction as though it were itself existent
and divane." (Ladd, Philosophy of Conduct, p. 385.)
The doctrine that conscience is autonomous, inde- pendent, sovereign, a law-giver deriving its authority from no higher source, will neither, logically speaking, satisfy the idea of duty, nor sufficiently safeguard morality. One cannot, after all, owe a debt to him- self; he cannot lay a command on himself. If moral judgments can claim no higher origin than one's own reason, then under close, severe inspection they must be considered as merely preferential. The portentous magisterial tone in which conscience speaks is a mere delusion ; it can show no warrant or title to the author- ity which it pretends to exercise, \\hen, under stress of temptation, a man who believes in no higher legisla- tor than conscience, finds arising in his mind the in- evitable question, Why am I bound to obey my con- science when my desires run in another direction? he is perilously tempted to adjust his moral code to his inclinations; and the device of spelling duty with a capital will prove but a slender support to it against the attack of passion.
Reason solves the problem of duty, and vindicates the sanctity of the law of righteousness by tracing them to their source in God. As the cosmic order is a product and expression of the Divine \\'ill, so, like- wise, is the moral law which is expressed in the ra- tional nature. God wills that we shape our free action or conduct to that norm. Reason recognizing our de- pendence on the Creator, and acknowledging His in- effable majesty, power, goodness, and sanctity, teaches us that we owe Him love, reverence, obedi- ence, service, and, consequently, we owe it to Him to observe that law which He has implanted within us as the ideal of conduct. This isour first and all-compre- hensive duty in w'hich all other duties have their root. In the light of this truth conscience explains itself, and is transfigured. It is the accredited representa- tive of the Eternal; He is the original Imponent of moral obligation; and disobedience to conscience is disobedience to Him. Infraction of the moral law is not merely a violence done to our rational nature; it is also an offence to God, and this aspect of its malice is designated by calling it sin. The sanctions of con- science, self-approbation, and self-reproach, are rein- forced by the supreme sanction, which, if one may use the expression, acts automatically. It consists in this, that by obedience to the law we reach our perfec- tion, and compa.ss our supreme good; while, on the other hand, the transgressor condemns him.self to mi.ss that good in the attainment of which alone lies the happiness that is incorruptible. To obviate a possi- ble misapprehension it may be remarked here that the distinction between right and wTong hangs not upon
any arbitrary decree of the Divine Will. Right is
right and wrong is wrong because the prototype of the
created order, of which the moral law forms a part, is
the Divine Nature itself, the ultimate ground of all
truth intellectual and moral.
Erroneous Ethics. — We have already touched upon the main weakness of the Kantian theory, which is to treat conscience as autonomous. Another mis- take of Kant is that in his system duty and right are made coterminous. A moment's reflection is suffi- cient to perceive that this is an error. There are many conceivable good actions which one can do, and which it would be highly praiseworthy to perform, yet which no reasonable person, however rigorous his ideal of conduct might be, would say one is bound to per- form. Duty and right are two concentric circles. The inner one, duty, embraces all that is to be ob- served under penalty of failing to live rationally. The outer contains the inner, but, stretching far beyond, permits an indefinite extension to the paths of virtue that lead to consummate righteousness and sanctity. Every philosophic system which embraces as one of its tenets the doctrine of determinism thereby com- mits itself to the denial of the existence of moral obli- gation. Duty implies that the subject of it possesses the power to observe the law, or to disobey, and the power to choose between those alternatives. What reproach can a determinist mentor logically address to one who has committed a wrong action? "You ought not to have done so? The culprit can reply: "But you have taught me that free will is a delusion; that no one can act otherwise than he does. So, under the circumstances in which I found myself, it was impossible for me to refrain from the action which you condemn. What, then, can you mean by saying that I ought not to have acted as I did? You re- proach me ; as well reproach a tiger for having eaten his man or a volcano for having ruined a village."
With regard to the existence of duty every form of pantheism, or monism, logically finds itself in the camp of determinism. When man is looked upon as one with the Infinite, Ids actions are not really his own, but belong properly to the Universal Being. The part assigned to him, in his activities, is similar to that played by a carbon burner in relation to the electric current generated by a dynamo. The Divine power passing through him clothes itself with only a seeming individu,ility, while the whole course of action, the direction which it takes, and the results in which it culminates, belong to the Supreme Being. If this were true, then lying, debauchery, theft, murder were equally as worthy as truthfulness, chastity, honesty, benevolence; for all would be equally manifestations of the one universal Divinity. Then a classification of conduct into two opposite categories might still be made from the standpoint of results; but the idea of moral worth, which is the very core of the moral life and the first postulate of duty, would havevanished. Hedonism of every shade — epicurean, utilitarian, ego- istic, altruistic, evolutionary — w-hich builds on one or another form of the "greatest happiness" principle and makes pleasure and pain the discriminating norm of right and wrong, is unable to vindicate any author- ity for duty, or even to acknowledge the existence of moral obligation. No comljination of impulses, if they are estimated from the merely biological or purely empirical standpoint, can, by any juggling of words, be converted into a moral hierarchy. The hedonist is doomed to find all his endeavour to estab- lish the basis of the moral order terminate in " is", but never in "ought", in a fact, but never in an ideal. Lecky has neatly summed up the hedonist solution o( the problem of duty: " .Ml that is meant by saying we ought to do an action is that if we ilo not do it we shall suffer. "
Pleasure, say the epicurean and the egoist, is the only motive of action; and actions are good or bad
