simply described moral institutions in their systematic connection. Hegel's Philosophy of Law is an important instance. By moral institutions, to define the phrase by examples, I mean such relations of life as the family, or friendship, or the labour of the artisan, or the relation of prince and subject in the state. These three ideas, virtue, duty, moral institutions, describe in fact the same things from different points of view. Moral relations, to speak summarily, are institutions when we think of how they are built upon the various human impulses, as the family is on the sexual impulse: they are duties so far as they are binding on the individuals who enter into the relations: they imply virtues as the qualities of the agent's mind. This is, however, only a summary statement, and we have to inquire more minutely into the connection between the three ideas. The chief difficulty lies in the relation of virtue and duty to each other, a question which I will consider first.

2. Of the two, virtue and duty, the former would seem to have a prior claim to be the principle of classification, because it seems to cover a wider area than duty. The two ideas are indeed commonly used in antagonism. Virtue, it is said, includes duty, but contains something more, and we point the contrast sometimes by the phrase strict or bare duty which seems to limit duty to a minimum. At the same time, the antagonism of the two ideas is not complete. There is no doubt that if there is a duty, it is not only obligatory but virtuous to do it. The distinctive mark of virtue seems to lie in what is beyond duty: yet every such act must depend on the peculiar circumstances under which it is done, of which we leave the agent to be the judge, and we certainly think it his duty to do what is best.

1 This plan is not confined to Hegel and his followers. The greater part of Lotze's Outlines of Practical Philosophy is taken up with a description of social institutions. The Allgemeine Ethik of Prof. Steinthal, a Herbartian, exhibits the moral life as realising the great normative ideas of morals. Prof. Wundt's Ethik proceeds similarly.

The relation of virtue and duty is complicated, but it will be found, I believe, that when we are considering the moral value of conduct (a proviso to be explained later) virtue and duty are co-extensive, the former describing conduct by the quality of the agent's mind, the latter by the nature of the act performed. At the same time, though every virtue is a duty, and every duty a virtue, there are certain actions to which it is more natural to apply the term virtuous. Duty is an idea which has not only moral but also legal associations, and it is mainly coloured by the latter. Now there are certain important

characteristics of legal conduct. In the first place (1) it is compulsory, and hence we do not naturally speak of duty in respect of acts, like eating, &c., to which the inducement is obvious, and from which the difficulty would be to get people to abstain. But this need not delay us, because we do not naturally speak of these as virtues. either. The characteristics of legal conduct which concern us here are (2) that it is definite and precise; (3) that it fixes not so much the superior as the inferior limit of possible right actions: it furnishes a standard below which people are likely to go, and below which they must not go: but it offers no guide for individual dispositions which may go beyond the law. In Grote's words, "it takes cognisance not of any risings above it, but only of fallings below it."1 These two characteristics coincide, for the conduct which can be fixed definitely and precisely is that which can be required of the average man. Accordingly we should expect the other idea of virtue in contrast to duty to be applied most naturally in cases where the circumstances are indefinite, and a margin is left for the individual's judgment, and where the act exceeds the average standard.

3. A few examples will verify these results.2 There

1 John Grote, Treatise on the Moral Ideals, ch. vii., p. 85.

2 In this section I have found Mr. Sidgwick's chapter on 'Virtue and Duty' helpful (Methods of Ethics, Bk. III., ch. ii.).

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is a general duty to give charity, and of a particular class of people we can lay down the minimum which is obligatory. But the amount to be given is indefinite, because of the variety in different persons' positions, or the claims made upon them for other purposes. Hence any one

who gives considerably more than the minimum we call virtuous. Still we do not imply that his act stands on a different footing from an act of duty. Supposing we knew his circumstances, we should feel that in his place we should do the same, and we know, moreover, that he himself regards his action in the light of a duty. We regard his action as right, but we have a warmer feeling for it than mere approval, a feeling of admiration which is based partly on the merit of the action, its actual largeness, partly on the contrast we make between what this man has done, and what many would do in his place. There is a similar difference in our mode of regarding the omission of such virtuous acts. Violations of a definite duty we condemn, but if a man fails of a high degree of liberality, then we simply withhold approval, because we do not know how far other claims permit the liberality. If we knew his circumstances, then, though we should not perhaps pronounce condemnation, we should do what is equivalent, we should think the worse of him.

Again there is a general duty to save a life which is in danger, but if I plunge into the sea to save a drowning man, I am not simply praised for doing my duty, but admired for virtue. Bravery here seems more than duty. However, the case is really like the last: the limits within. which a man should risk his life depend partly on his own skill and physical qualifications, partly on how far he is free from obligations to family or country. If I were known to be a strong swimmer and a man of naturally hardy temperament, I should perhaps be actually condemned for not risking my life. But just because such emergencies and such powers are not provided for in the average level of requirements, it seems

inappropriate and unnatural to call my act one of duty.

What is true of ordinary virtuous acts which go beyond strict duty is true also of acts for which even the mere name of virtue seems so insufficient that we call them noble or heroic. To the agents themselves they appear as acts of duty, and they are properly judged by us to stand on the same moral level as all other good acts, to be binding on the persons who do them. Moreover, not to have done them would be felt by those persons to be as keen a reproach as to have failed in an obvious duty, just as to a man of cultivated feelings the omission of a slight refinement may be as hateful as to break a contract. The hero himself is aware of his own responsibility to himself. The spectator cannot, however, apply to him such a 'juridical' conception, because it is only the agent himself who is in a position to judge.

4. Virtuous conduct, then, it might seem, is distinguished from dutiful conduct by superiority of merit, and it is true that the meritorious and the virtuous partly coincide. But the coincidence is only partial: it exists only so far as what I may call positive merit is concerned: that which depends on some superiority of gifts, as in the case of the hero or of the good rich man. On the other hand, negative merit, where a man is good in spite of some great disadvantage, does not make an act virtuous as contrasted with dutiful conduct. If a man has a strong passion, say for drink, it is still his duty to repress it; and though we may attribute merit to him, and may even call him a virtuous man, yet by that epithet we do not imply that he has done more than his duty, as we do suggest when Ham Peggotty, in the story, plunges into the storm to save the shipwrecked man. Thus action may be meritorious where it is not natural to call it a duty, but it may be also meritorious where it is not natural to call it virtue. Merit, in fact, means a scale within the range of good acts themselves. When

we speak of either duty or virtue we are always thinking of them in contrast to the action which is rejected, crime or vice.

5. Virtue and duty, though differently applied, are thus in reality co-extensive, in the sense that there is nothing in a virtuous act which makes it different from an act of duty. It was stated above that this was true so long as we considered the moral value of actions. The proviso was added, because we have to distinguish two different classes of virtue, or if it is preferred, two senses of the word virtue, corresponding to the distinction of ethical and pathological. By the pathological virtues I mean certain gifts of emotion or sentiment which are sometimes thought to make action more virtuous, but do not alter its real character. Thus, for example, the virtue of benevolence may be thought imperfect without kindly feeling, though a man may be benevolent without any such spontaneous movement. Chastity, again, may in some natures be accompanied by, and flow from, a delicacy of feeling which makes all unlawful suggestions impossible. Now if these emotions were necessary to their respective virtues, we should have to admit that duty was less than virtue. But we must maintain that they are excellences which do not alter the moral character of conduct, and may be absent altogether, and leave the agent as virtuous as if they were present. Some persons, indeed, would say that there was less virtue in characters which possessed these emotional endowments. This would not be a true representation of the common view which holds that they make their possessor more lovable, but they do not make him better. In themselves they are not virtues in the ethical sense, but only "add a lustre" to habits of will. They may even be ineffectual, as often happens with very good-natured persons, or they may be positively bad. Courage, for instance, we admire even in a villain. may conclude, then, that these excellences of disposition are only valuable in so far as they are helps to virtue,

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