OBEDIENCE 175 



obedience, we mean an obedience that is qualified by other, 

 and, it may be, conflicting motives. In so far as it is intel 

 ligent, it is not obedience. 



The two remaining springs of action, which, as motives 

 to compliance, are most commonly identified with obedience, 

 are fear and indolence. These need not detain us long. It 

 is clear that each of these may act sometimes as an aid 

 and at others as a hindrance. On the one hand, fear of 

 punishment may confirm the obedience of a man who is 

 already disposed to obey ; on the other, fear of danger 

 may powerfully deter a man from holding a post which 

 has been assigned to him by his captain. Similarly, indo 

 lence, when the exertion of debate is too grievous to be 

 endured, may keep motives for disobedience out of sight ; 

 but it is equally likely, as in the case of the man who pro 

 mised his father to go to the vineyard, to reinforce them, 

 whenever to comply involves exertion. Now the temper 

 of obedience always enforces compliance, and it cannot 

 be identical with qualities which are as likely as not to oppose 

 it. The same may be said of affection and sympathy. 

 Either of these may be engaged either in favour of the 

 man with whose wishes compliance is demanded, or against 

 him. 



The conclusion we arrive at is that, in true obedience, 

 the command is itself the stimulating motive, and the 

 tendency to obey is a distinct and separate tendency or 

 impulse, differing from all other impulses. A man is of 

 an obedient disposition when he is so constituted as to react 

 readily to a command. 



There are few, if any, of the dispositions of human nature 

 which are entirely peculiar to humanity, or owe their first 

 origin to the social needs and institutions of our race. 

 Justice, which is commonly regarded as the type of artificial 

 impulses, is derived, in one of its forms, from the jealousy 

 which demands equal distribution, in another, from the 

 instinct of resentment, and in a third from the sense of 

 property all of them sentiments which are clearly observ 

 able in many of the lower animals. In the same way, the 



