In this essay the First Part treats of the source and character of Obligation. Its view is confined to the moral bond subsisting in the simple relation of man to man in entire parity and reciprocity. The Second Part treats of the varieties of obligation arising from the varieties of relation due to the Organization of men into complex associations.

theological and ecclesiastical view traces obligation to the revealed will of God as ultimate, maintaining that a course is good and right simply because he wills it, and that if he willed otherwise its morality would be otherwise (Crusius, Grotius, Descartes). The political view discerns ultimate authority in the enactments of the State (Hobbes, Kirchmann).

Autonomy finds the origin and sanction of morality in spontaneous, original, independent cognitions and impulses. It subdivides into apriorism or nativism or intuitionism, and empiricism whose specialized form is evolutionism. The apriorist founds morality on an original, innate, intuitive activity; the empiricist refers it to experience, or to a gradual development. Among apriorists we reckon Cudworth, Clarke, Kant, Fichte, Lotze; among empiricists, Spencer, Wundt.

Empiricism in the special form of evolution, to which allusion has already been made in § 20, is widely approved in the philosophic ethics of to-day. Evidently it is an hypothesis of psychogenesis, of historical psychology. But, we question "whether ethics really has any necessary interest in an historical and psychological inquiry into the origin of ethical judgments. A normative discipline, an art of volition and action, can gain nothing either for the validity or for the systematization of its norms and precepts from the proof of their gradual development under a variety of conditions and influences. . . . Evolutionism is an hypothesis, not a norm; it gives an explanation of particular facts, but no precepts or laws by which to regulate our conduct; and hence the antithesis of intuitionism and empiricism is not of essential significance for Ethics."— KÜLPE, Int. to Phil., § 27, 9. Cf. F. Bretano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntniss, 1889; and C. M. Williams, Systems of Ethics founded on the Theory of Evolution, 1893.

The view of the present treatise is heteronomous in that it finds the basis of morality in the order of nature taken in its widest sense; autonomous or nativist in that it attributes to man the ability to interpret constituent nature, and discern his obligation to conform to its order. But the basis and genesis of morality, unless merely a historical, is a philosophical and not an ethical thesis. The problem before us is: Given the simple idea or notion of a right; to find all forms of obligation.

CHAPTER I

RIGHTS

§ 22. Every man conceives himself as having certain personal rights which he esteems of great worth, and guards with jealous care. Throughout life he is chiefly occupied with enlarging, confirming and defending them. They are a sacred possession which he zealously maintains, and whose loss or diminution he regards as degrading his manhood. This is one of the most striking and significant facts in the historical and current activities of mankind.

Thence arises much of the strife that continually agitates the world. Among barbaric peoples personal violence is commonly used to maintain or to recover what one claims to be his personal rights. Among civilized peoples courts of justice are established to determine the relative rights of contending parties, and an executive is empowered to enforce their decrees. Nearly all the litigation abounding in every nation throughout history is a contention for real or imaginary rights.

While each individual man has his own private rights, there are many of which he is possessed in common with other persons. The maintenance and development of common or public rights is committed to organized society, the tribe, the state, the nation. When the claims of one on another of these conflict or are questioned, diplomacy assumes to adjust the rights involved. This failing, recourse is had to war. Hence the innumerable battles that mark the tragic history of mankind.

§ 23. Evidently the notion of a right, since it is the source of such intense particular and social activity, has deep root in human nature. Also it is evident that, throughout the contentions to which it gives rise, there is an appeal to some common principle or law of widest generality, applicable to an infinity of cases, and of the highest practical importance in the progressive life of humanity. But inasmuch as this universal and overbearing law is for the most part obscurely discerned and imperfectly formulated, it is inevitable that men should differ often and widely in its application to particular cases. It is the province of Ethics to search out and formulate the law, and to unfold its general bearing on the several classes of its subjects.

To this end let us fix discriminating attention on the notion of a right. It is an abstract from personal relations, and catholic in them. Whenever and wherever two persons come into any mutually affective relation whatever, then and there come into being reciprocal rights, and consequent obligations. The abstracted notion of a right, being pure and simple, is as to itself incapable of analysis, and hence of formal definition. But we may examine its conditions, its antitheses, correlatives, and other implications, and thus clear the conception, and distinguish it by its invariable environment and limitations. This analytical process will disclose fundamental and determining elements, fixing clearly the scope and bearing of the notion, and evolving the formative principle and the law involved in its essence.

§ 24. Life is obviously a primary condition of any right. Only living beings have rights. The notion is incongruous to a stock or a stone. Among living beings, those alone can be conceived as having rights that are endowed with a consciousness involving at least volition, its primary element, conjoined with some degree of sensibility. A right, then, is

1 The new Psychology considers will as the primary and constitutive

a logical property, a mark that belongs to this, and to no other class of beings.1

But conscious life is not merely a condition of rights, not merely what must be in order that rights may be. There is in its very nature that which determines that rights shall be. They are of its essence. Thus every conscious being necessarily has rights by virtue of its ultimate constitution. It is not necessary that every one so constituted should be aware of the fact, either in detail or in general, not even in the most obscure way. But the higher orders of conscious beings recognize relatively to themselves the existence of rights

function of mind; intelligence, as a secondary development. The leader of this view is Schopenhauer (Willen in der Natur, et al.); followed by Schneider (Der Theirische Wille, 1880), Wundt (System der Philosophie, 1889, and Vorlesungen über die Menschen und Thierseele, 2d ed., 1892), Paulsen (Einleitung in die Philosophie, 1893), and many others. It sees the will arising, without perception or intelligence, as a blind craving or instinctive impulse, and thereon and thereby a gradual development of intelligence as a means to gratification. Thus a jelly-fish, a polyp, an infusory, knows nothing of itself, or of external things; a mere craving determines its vital activities. Gradually, in the progressive series of animal life, we see intelligence grafted on the will. To instinctive movements are added others guided by perception, and then by intelligent purpose involving deliberation and choice. Also every human being enters the world as a blind will without intellect. The nursling is all will; its voluntary movements are blindly instinctive. When a craving is satisfied, a feeling of satisfaction arises, otherwise a feeling of discomfort. In pleasurable and painful feelings, the will becomes aware of itself, and of its relation to an environment. Out of feeling, knowledge is gradually evolved, and in the more mature child the will appears saturated with intelligence. In this survey, the will is seen to be the original and constant factor of the life of the soul. At the close of the series, we find it directed towards the same great ends as at the beginning, the preservation and evolution of individual life and of the species. Intelligence is the secondary and variable factor, which is gradually imparted to the will as an instrument. So the voluntaristic as distinguished from the intellectualistic Psychology.

1 The rights of man extend, however, beyond his natural life. Our ancestors still have rights, and posterity has rights, which the living are bound to respect. Yet life, past, present or to come, is a condition of this property. See infra, § 119.

in the lower orders, though these be quite destitute of the notion.1

§ 25. Every man has, elemental in his conscious life, certain powers of mind, and thence of body. These powers, faculties and capacities, belong to his nature, to his original constitution, and are essential in his make-up as a man, as a human being. They are, more specifically, conditions psychologically antecedent to the existence and apprehension of rights, and rights are the natural and necessary consequence of their existence. That is to say, powers and rights are natural, constitutional, original correlatives.

These native powers are distributed as modes of knowing and feeling, desiring and willing. The members of the latter couple constitute more particularly the practical side of human nature, and are intimately concerned with the existence and exercise of rights. Therefore on them especially we fix our present attention.

A desire implies an impulse, occasioned by a want, urging the will to an activity, relative to other powers, such as seems likely to result in gratification.2 Every one is actuated by desires which thus motive his conduct. These sources of activity are the determinants of his welfare, and his rights have in them their ultimate ground. Hence it is only as his desires, either actual or potential, are infringed that his rights are affected; and to that for which he has not and cannot possibly have a desire, e. g., a villa in the moon, he has not

1 The wide class of beings having conscious life includes the brute forms of animal life. That brutes have rights is beyond question, though they themselves have no knowledge of the fact. This is recognized by a merciful man; he does not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn. Also it is recognized in many States by protective laws. See infra, § 68, note. Our proposed inquiry shall be limited, however, to beings of the highest order, and among these, more especially, to human beings.

2 See supra, § 5.