OBEDIENCE 181 



a friend by the unnecessary or inopportune disclosure of 

 disaster ; the benevolence that will not submit to the 

 restraints of moral wisdom, are none of them approved 

 by the general moral consciousness of humanity, and, as 

 that approval constitutes virtue, are not virtuous. Simi 

 larly obedience, when it attains a strength which gives 

 it the upper hand over all other impulses, and in all circum 

 stances, must frequently cease to be a virtue. 



These considerations may be applied, first to the conflicts 

 which may arise between the three different branches of 

 obedience, and next to the conflicts of obedience generally 

 with the other impulses. 



Before we can discuss this question, as far as it relates 

 to the rival claims on our obedience made by the three 

 distinct forms of constituted authority, we must first make 

 up our minds as to what we are to regard as the final end 

 which justifies the claim of obedience to take rank as a virtue. 

 Although it is beyond the capacity of human reason to dis 

 cover the absolute final end of action, or even to ascertain 

 whether there is one, that being a question of faith rather 

 than of reason, no ethical discussion can be carried on, 

 unless one is assumed. For our present purpose, however, 

 we may be contented with an empirical or proximate end, 

 and assume that the final end which makes obedience to 

 constituted authority a virtue is the continued existence 

 of the nation of which the man from whom the obedience 

 is claimed is a member. If a nation in which social, political, 

 and religious obedience were unknown remained as strong, 

 as well able to cope with its neighbours, and with other 

 less obvious perils in its environment, such as plague, 

 pestilence, and famine, it is not easy to discover on what 

 grounds obedience came to be accounted as a virtue at all ; 

 and the same consideration holds good for each of its 

 distinct forms separately. Each of the three institutions, 

 the household, the secular government, and the Church, 

 depends for its power entirely on the degree of obedience 

 which it can exact from its members, and, without their 

 obedience, would cease, for all practical purposes, to exist. 



