249. As the kind of moral duties (in distinction from those obligations which are correlative to rights) which relate to the maintenance of free society and the disposition to fulfil those duties should form a special object of inquiry, so another special kind would be those which have to do with the management of property, with the acquisition and expenditure of wealth. To respect the rights of property in others, to fulfil the obligations correlative to those rights, is one thing; to make a good use of property, to be justly generous and generously just in giving and receiving, is another, and that may properly be treated as a special kind of virtue which appears in the duly blended prudence, equity, and generosity of the ideal man of business. Another special kind will be that which appears in family relations; where indeed that merely negative observance of right, which in other relations can be distinguished from the positive fulfilment of moral duties, becomes unmeaning. As we have seen, there are certain aggravations and perpetuations of wrong from which husband or wife or children can be protected by law, but the fulfilment of the claims which arise out of the marriage-tie requires a virtuous will in the active and positive sense—a will governed by unselfish interests—on the part of those concerned.
250. What is called 'moral sentiment' is merely a weaker form of that interest in social well-being which, when wrought into a man's habits and strong enough to determine action, we call virtue. So far as this interest is brought into play on the mere survey of action, and serves merely to determine an approbation or disapprobation, it is called moral sentiment. The forms of moral sentiment accordingly should be classified on some principle as forms of virtue, i.e. with relation to the social functions to which they correspond.
251. For the convenience of analysis, we may treat the obligations correlative to rights, obligations which it is the proper office of law to enforce, apart from moral duties and from the virtues which are tendencies to fulfil those duties. I am properly obliged to those actions and forbearances which are necessary to the general freedom, necessary if each is not to interfere with the realisation of another's will. My duty is to be interested positively in my neighbour's well-being. And it is important to understand that, while the enforcement of obligations is possible, that of moral duties is impossible. But the establishment of obligations by law or authoritative custom, and the gradual recognition of moral duties, have not been separate processes They have gone on together in the history of man. The growth of the institutions by which more complete equality of rights is gradually secured to a wider range of persons, and of those interests in various forms of social well-being by which the will is moralised, have been related to each other as the outer and inner side of the same spiritual development, though at a certain stage of reflection it comes to be discovered that the agency of force, by which the rights are maintained, is ineffectual for eliciting the moral interests. The result of the twofold process has been the creation of the actual content of morality; the articulation of the indefinite consciousness that there is something that should be—a true well-being to be aimed at other than any pleasure or succession of pleasures—into the sentiments and interests which form an 'enlightened conscience.' It is thus that when the highest stage of reflective morality is reached, and upon interests in this or that mode of social good there supervenes an interest in an ideal of goodness, that ideal has already a definite filling; and the man who pursues duty for duty's sake, who does good for the sake of being good or in order to realise an idea of perfection, is at no loss to say what in particular his duty is, or by what particular methods the perfection of character is to be approached.
SUPPLEMENT.
Some Quotations rendered into English.
From Sect. 32. Tractatus Politici, II. 4 ('Per jus itaque'). 'By right of nature (natural right) I understand … the actual power of nature.' 'Whatever an individual man does by the laws of his nature, that he does with the highest natural right, and his right towards nature goes just as far as his power holds out.'
'Jus naturae' = 'natural right.' 'Potentia' = 'power.' 'Jus' = 'right.' 'Jus humanum' = 'right of man,' or 'right qua human.'
Ib. II. 5 ('Homines magis'). 'Human beings are led more by blind desire than by reason; and hence their natural power or right should be marked out not by reason but by any inclination by which they are determined to act, and by which they endeavour after their own preservation.'
'Jus civile' = 'civic right or law.'
Ib. II. 14 ('Quatenus homines'). 'In as far as human beings are troubled by anger, jealousy, or any emotion of hate, so far they are drawn in different directions and are antagonistic to one another, and therefore they are more to be feared in so far as they are more powerful, and more shrewd and astute, than the other animals; and because human beings are in the highest degree liable by nature to these emotions, therefore they are natural enemies (to one another).'