SCIENCE OE RECTITUDE AS DISTINCT FROM EXPEDIENCE. 129 
which duty, if truly discerned as such, is conscientiously 
acknowledged, and which constitutes an essential distinction, 
of profound moral import, between looking upon anything 
as right, and merely perceiving that it is “expedient, The 
doctrine which substitutes expedience for rectitude assumes 
the sentiment in question to be nothing but a habit of mind 
induced by experiences that generate a ‘dread of interminably 
disastrous consequences in the event of persistent disobe- 
dience. Conscientious scrupulousness, it is conceived, may 
be a somewhat complex feeling; but the reverential regard 
for what is right which it yields when analysed, turns out to 
be an acquiescent sense of helplessness in relation to superior 
might. Each member of a community, learning by expe- 
rience that the social order in which he finds himself is too 
strong to be successfully resisted by his individual will, 
acquires a sober fear of testing its strength by violating any 
of the rules of conduct to which it has subjected him, and of 
thus incurring the disapprobation of his fellow men, or, it 
may be, the entire forfeiture of respectability, and, if he 
should render himself lable to prosecution as a law breaker, 
judicially inflicted punishment. 
Let it, then, be for a moment assumed that rectitude never 
receives any other reverential recognition than that which 
has its root in the fear of such penalties as men have it in 
their power to inflict. What better outgrowth, we may ask, 
is to be expected from this kind of fear than the endeavour 
to avoid such penalties? Its evidently proper fruits are 
cautious behaviour, diplomatically guarded language, 
plausible representations, studious care in the outward 
observance of all conventional proprieties, and, indeed, if it 
becomes the dominant principle of action, unremitting efforts 
to obtain by any means the credit of doing the right thing. 
The most successful students of the wisdom and knowledge 
which have their beginning in the fear of men must needs 
be in this species of performance the most accomplished 
actors, or, to use a very significant word in its strictly accu- 
rate sense, the most consummate hypocrites. But does the 
theory which identifies a conscientious regard for rectitude 
with the dread of arraignment before one or another of those 
tribunals at which society passes sentence on delinquents 
adequately account for all the phenomena of the human con- 
science? Can we perceive in it the cause of that feeling of 
compunction with which an honest man is visited, if in any 
business transaction he finds that he has, through failing to 
exercise due care and caution, detrauded his neighbour? 
