Part I, ch. vii.).

=Subordination of Near to Remote Good Dependent on Social Influences.=--"The conscious relinquishment of immediate and special good to gain distant and general good ... is a cardinal trait of the self-restraint called moral." But this develops out of forms of restraint which are not moral; where the "relinquishment" and subordination of the present and temporary good is not consciously willed by the individual in view of a conscious appreciation of a distant and inclusive good; but where action in view of the latter is forced upon the individual by outside authority, operating by menace, and having the sanction of fear. These outside controls are three in number: political or legal; supernatural, priestly, or religious; and popular. All these external controls, working through dread of pain and promise of reward, bring about, however, in the individual a habit of looking to the remote, rather than to the proximate, end. At first the thought of these extrinsic consequences, those which do not flow from the act but from the reaction of others to it, is mixed up with the thought of its own proper consequences. But this association causes attention at least to be fixed upon intrinsic consequences that, because of their remoteness and complexity, might otherwise escape attention. Gradually the thought of them grows in clearness and efficacy and dissociates itself as a motive from the externally imposed consequences, and there is a control which alone is truly moral.

=The Internal Sanction.=--

"The truly moral deterrent from murder, is not constituted by a representation of hanging as a consequence, or by a representation of tortures in hell as a consequence, or by a representation of the horror and hatred excited in fellow-men; but by a representation of the _necessary natural results_--the infliction of death agony on the victim, the destruction of all his possibilities of happiness, the entailed sufferings to his belongings" (Spencer, _Ibid._, p. 120).

The external constraints thus serve as a schoolmaster to bring the race and the individual to internal restraint. Gradually the abstract sense of coerciveness, authoritativeness, the need of controlling the present by the future good is disentangled, and there arises the sense of duty in general. But even this "is transitory and will diminish as fast as moralization increases" (_Ibid._, p. 127). Persistence in performance of a duty makes it a pleasure; an habitually exercised obligation is naturally agreeable.

In the present state of evolutionary development, obligation, or the demands made by the external environment, and spontaneous inclination, or the demand of the organism, cannot coincide. But at the goal of evolution, the organism and environment will be in perfect adjustment. Actions congenial to the former and appropriate to the latter will completely coincide. "In their proper times and places, and proportions, the moral sentiments will guide men just as spontaneously and adequately as now do the sensations" (_Ibid._, p. 129).

=Criticism of Utilitarianism.=--The utilitarian account of the development of the consciousness of duty or its emphasis upon concrete facts of social arrangements and education affords a much-needed supplement to the empty and abstract formalism of Kant. (i.) The individual is certainly brought to his actual recognition of specific duties and to his consciousness of obligation or moral law in general through social influences. Bain insists more upon the family training and discipline of its immature members; Bentham and Spencer more upon the general institutional conditions, or the organization of government, law, judicial procedure, crystallized custom, and public opinion. In reality, these two conditions imply and reënforce each other. It is through the school of the family, for the most part, that the meaning of the requirements of the larger and more permanent institutions are brought home to the individual; while, on the other hand, the family derives the aims and values which it enforces upon the attention of its individual members mainly from the larger society in which it finds its own setting. (ii.) The later utilitarianism, in its insistence upon an "internal sanction," upon the ideal personal, or free facsimile of public authority, upon regard for "intrinsic consequences," corrects the weak point in Bentham (who relies so unduly upon mere threat of punishment and mere fear of pain) and approximates in practical effect, though not in theory, Kant's doctrine of the connection of duty with the rational or "larger" self which is social, even if individual. Even in its revised version utilitarianism did not wholly escape from the rigid unreal separation between the selfhood of the agent and his social surroundings forced upon it by its hedonistic psychology.

=Fictitious Theory of Nature of Self.=--The supposition that the individual starts with mere love of private pleasure, and that, if he ever gets beyond to consideration of the good of others, it is because others have forced their good upon him by interfering with his private pleasures, is pure fiction. The requirements, encouragements, and approbations of others react not primarily upon the pleasures and calculations of the individual, but upon his _activities_, upon his inclinations, desires, habits. There is a common defect in the utilitarian and Kantian psychology. Both neglect the importance of the active, the organically spontaneous and direct tendencies which enter into the individual. Both assume unreal "_states_ of consciousness," passive sensations, and feelings. Active tendencies may be internally modified and redirected by the very conditions and consequences of their own exercise. Family discipline, jural influences, public opinion, may do little, or they may do much. But their educative influence is as far from the mere association of feelings of pleasure and pain as it is from Kant's purely abstract law. _Social influences enable an individual to realize the weight and import of the socially available and helpful manifestations of the tendencies of his own nature and to discriminate them from those which are socially harmful or useless._ When the two conflict, the perception of the former is the recognition of duties as distinct from _mere_ inclinations.

§ 3. FINAL STATEMENT

=Duty and a Growing Character.=--Duty is what is owed by a partial isolated self embodied in established, facile, and urgent tendencies, to that ideal self which is presented in aspirations which, since they are not yet formed into habits, have no organized hold upon the self and which can get organized into habitual tendencies and interests only by a more or less painful and difficult reconstruction of the habitual self. For Kant's fixed and absolute separation between the self of inclination and the self of reason, we substitute the relative and shifting distinction between those factors of self which have become so definitely organized into set habits that they take care of themselves, and those other factors which are more precarious, less crystallized, and which depend therefore upon conscious acknowledgment and intentionally directed affection. The consciousness of duty grows out of the complex character of the self; the fact that at any given time, it has tendencies relatively set, ingrained, and embodied in fixed habits, while it also has tendencies in process of making, looking to the future, taking account of unachieved possibilities. The former give the solid relatively formed elements of character; the latter, its ideal or unrealized possibilities. Each must play into the other; each must help the other out.

The conflict of duty and desire is thus an accompaniment of a _growing_ self. Spencer's complete disappearance of obligation would mean an exhausted and fossilized self; wherever there is progress, tension arises between what is already accomplished and what is possible. In a being whose "reach should exceed his grasp," a conflict within the self making for the readjustment of the direction of powers must always be found. The value of continually _having to meet the expectations and requirements of others is in keeping the agent from resting on his oars, from falling back on habits already formed as if they were final_. The phenomena of duty in all their forms are thus phenomena attendant upon the expansion of ends and the reconstruction of character. So far, accordingly, as the recognition of duty is capable of operating as a distinct rëenforcing motive, it operates most effectively, not as an interest in duty, or law in the abstract, but as an interest in progress in the face of the obstacles found within character itself.

LITERATURE

The most important references on the subject of duty are given in the text. To these may be added: Ladd, _Philosophy of Conduct_, chs. v. and xv.; Mackenzie, _Manual_, Part I., ch. iv.; Green, _Prolegomena_, pp. 315-320, 353-354 and 381-388; Sharp, _International Journal of Ethics_, Vol. II., pp. 500-513; Muirhead, _Elements of Ethics_, Book II., ch. ii.; McGilvary, _Philosophical Review_, Vol. XI., pp. 333-352; Stephen, _Science of Ethics_, pp. 161-171; Sturt, _International Journal of Ethics_, Vol. VII., 334-345; Schurman, _Philosophical Review_, Vol. III., pp. 641-654; Guyau, _Sketch of Morals, without Obligation or Sanction_.

FOOTNOTES:

[166] _Last Essays on Church and Religion_, preface.

[167] Historically it has often taken theological form. Thus Paley defined virtue as "doing good to mankind in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness." Of obligation he said, "A man is said to be obliged, when he is urged by a violent motive resulting from the command of another."

[168] The earlier English utilitarians (though not called by that name), such as Tucker and Paley, assert that upon this earth there is no exact coincidence of the right and the pleasure-giving; that it is future rewards and punishments which make the equilibrium. Sidgwick, among recent writers, has also held that no complete identification of virtue and happiness can be found apart from religious considerations. (See _Methods of Ethics_, p. 505. For theological utilitarianism see Albee, _History_.)

[169] See his _Utilitarianism_, ch. iii.