When the Sense of Duty Should be our Conduct's Sole Principle

¹¹³ Religion affords strong motives to the practice of virtue. It guards us from the temptations of vice through powerful restraints. Many have supposed that religious principles were the sole laudable motives of action. They said that we should not:

• reward from gratitude,
• punish from resentment,
• protect our children’s helplessness, and
• afford support to the infirmities of our parents, from natural affection.

Instead, all feelings for objects should be extinguished in our breast. The love of the Deity is the desire of:

• rendering ourselves agreeable to him, and
• directing our conduct according to his will.

It should be the one great affection above all others. We should not be:

• grateful from gratitude,
• charitable from humanity,
• public-spirited from the love of our country, and
• generous and just from the love of mankind.

Our conduct’s sole motive should be a sense that God has commanded us to do them. Christianity does not have a monopoly to such an opinion.

• Christianity’s first precept is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and strength.
• Its second precept is to love our neighbour as we love ourselves.

We love ourselves surely for our own sakes, not because we are commanded to do so.

Christianity has no rule saying that our sense of duty should be our sole principle. Instead, Christianity says that the sense of duty should be the governing principle as directed by philosophy and common sense.

When should our actions be guided by a sense of duty to the general rules and when should it be based on our feelings?

^114-115 This cannot be accurately answered as it will depend on two circumstances:

1. On the natural beauty or ugliness of the feeling which causes our action, independent of the general rules
2. On the precision or looseness of the general rules themselves.

According to the morality of the action’s underlying feeling

¹¹⁶ Our benevolent feelings prompt us to admirable actions. Those actions should proceed as much from those benevolent feelings, as from general rules. A benefactor thinks himself undercompensated, if his beneficiary repays him merely:

• from a cold sense of duty, and
• without any affection.

A husband is dissatisfied with the most obedient wife, when he imagines that she is merely following the rules of their relationship. A son might observe filial duty but lack affection. His parent may jusly complain of his indifference. Likewise, a son would not be satisfied with a parent who had no fatherly fondness even if his father performed all his duties.

With benevolent and social feelings, it is agreeable to see the sense of duty restraining them. It gives us pleasure to see:

• a father obliged to check his own fondness,
• a friend obliged to limit his natural generosity, and
• a person who has received a benefit, to see him restrain his own sanguine gratitude

¹¹⁷ The contrary maxim is applied to the unsocial feelings.

• We should reward from the gratitude and generosity of our own hearts, without reluctance or without thinking how great the propriety of rewarding is.
• We should always punish reluctantly, and more from a sense of the propriety of punishing, than from any desire for revenge.

It is graceful to see a man resenting the greatest injuries from a sense that the injuries deserve resentment, than from his own resentment. Like a judge, he considers only the general rule which determines the proper vengeance. In executing that rule, he feels less for what he has suffered, than for what the offender is about to suffer. He remembers mercy even if he is angry and interprets the rule in the gentlest way.

¹¹⁸ The selfish feelings are in the middle between the social and unsocial affections too. The ordinary pursuit of private interest should come from a regard to the general rules.

People would think low of a trader who was anxious about a shilling. His situation might require the most severe economy and exact assiduity. But each exertion of that economy must come from the general rule. This rule rigourously prescribes frugality to him, not so much from the idea of savings or gain.

• This frugality must not arise from a desire of a three-pence savings.
• His attentiveness to his shop must not arise from a feeling for the 10-pence that he will acquire by it.

Both should come solely from a regard to the general rule.

This is the difference between a miser and an accountant.

• The miser is anxious about small matters for their own sake.
• The accountant attends to small matters only because it is part of his life’s scheme.

¹¹⁹ It is otherwise with regard to the more important objects of self-interest. A person appears mean-spirited if he does not pursue these earnestly for their own sake. We should despise a prince who was not anxious about conquering or defending a province. We should have little respect for a private gentleman who did not exert himself to gain an estate or a considerable office, when he could acquire them without meanness or injustice.

A parliament member who shows no keenness about his own election is abandoned by his friends. Even a tradesman appears poor-spirited if he does not exert himself to get an extraordinary job or some uncommon advantage.

This spirit and keenness is the difference between the man of enterprise and the man of dull regularity. The objects of ambition are those great objects of self-interest which, when gained or lost, changes the person’s rank. When it is kept within the bounds of prudence and justice, it is always admired. It sometimes even has a certain irregular greatness which dazzles the imagination.

When it passes the limits of prudence and justice, it is unjust and extravagant. Hence the general admiration for:

• heroes and conquerors, and
• statesmen with very daring and extensive projects, though devoid of justice

Examples are those of the Cardinals of Richlieu and Retz. The objects of avarice and ambition differ only in their greatness. A miser is as furious about a halfpenny as a man of ambition about the conquest of a kingdom.

2. How far our conduct should proceed from the general rules will depend partly on the accuracy of the general rules themselves.

¹²¹ The general rules of almost all the virtues are loose and inaccurate. They have many exceptions and require so many modifications. It is impossible for them to regulate our conduct entirely.

The common proverbial maxims of prudence are founded in universal experience. They are perhaps the best general rules which can be given about it. However, it would be absurd to force a very strict adherence to them. The general rules determine what are the offices of prudence, charity, generosity, gratitude, and friendship.

Of these virtues, the rules are perhaps most precise and has the fewest exceptions with gratitude. It says that we should return equal or superior value to the services we receive as soon as we can.

This rule seems to be pretty plain, without any exceptions. However, on the most superficial examination, this rule will appear to be most inaccurate. It admits 10,000 exceptions.

• If your benefactor attended you in your sickness, should you attend him in his?
  • Can you fulfill the obligation of gratitude by making a return of a different kind?
  • If you should attend him, how long should you attend him?

• If your friend lent you money in your distress, should you to lend him money in his?
  • How much should you to lend him and for how long?
  • When should you to lend him?

There is no general rule for these. There might be a difference between:

• another person’s character and yours, and
• another person’s circumstances and yours.

You might be perfectly grateful and justly refuse to lend him a halfpenny. On the contrary, you might be willing to lend or even to give him 10 times the sum he lent you, yet you might be justly accused:

• of the blackest ingratitude, and
• of not having fulfilled 1/100th part of your obligation.

However, the duties of gratitude are perhaps the most sacred of all those prescribed to us by the beneficent virtues. The general rules which determine those duties are the most accurate. Those rules which ascertain the actions required by friendship, humanity, hospitality, generosity, are still more vague.

The general rules are precise with the virtue of Justice