and here I affirm nothing but myself. In either case there is no duty and no morality.
‘But rights and duties,’ we shall be told, ‘collide.’ They collide only as rights do with rights or duties with duties. Rights and duties of one sphere collide with those of another sphere, and again within each sphere they collide in different persons, and again in one and the same person. But that right as such can collide with duty as such is impossible. There is no right which is not a duty, no duty which is not a right. In either case right would cease to be right, and duty duty.
This will be denied. It will be said, (1) There are duties without rights; (2) rights without duties. As to the first (1) we say, If we have not a right to do anything, it is not right for us. If it is not right for us, then it is not our duty. It is quite true that moral duty may not be legal right, nor legal duty moral right, but this is not to the point.
As to the second (2), it seems harder to see that where I have no duties I have no rights. In the spheres of the state, of society, of ideal morality, I have a right to do this and not that, that and not the other. But can it be said that all these things that I have a right to do, are my duties? Is not that nonsense?
No doubt there is much truth in this. It is almost as bad to have nothing but duties as it is to have no duties at all. For free individual self-developement we must have both elements. Where the universal is all there is ossification; where the particular is all there is dissolution; in neither case life.
Is it true then that there are rights where there are no duties? No. In a sense, rights are wider than duties: but what does this mean? Does it mean there are rights outside the moral sphere? Certainly not. We shall see (Essay VI.) that there is no limit to the moral sphere; and if there were a limit, then outside that rights would cease to be rights. ‘More rights than duties’ then must be true, if at all, within the moral sphere. Does it hold there that there are more rights than duties? It is not a very hard puzzle. To make it easier let us double it, and say ‘there are more duties than rights.’ A man, for instance, has a certain indivisible sum to spend in charity. He has a duty to A, B, and C, but not a right to more than one, because it is wrong if he gives more than his indivisible limited sum. Hence there are more duties than rights. All that it comes to is that, when you look on duties as possible, they are wider than what, when actually done, is right and actual duty. Just so possible rights are wider than what is actually duty and actually right.
The reason why this is noticed on the side of rights, and not
