280 THE REV. H. J. CLARKE ON 
feeble its manifestations may be m a savage, does short- 
coming in such a case surprise intelligent observers: they 
would be astonished were they to find it highly developed. 
But the ordinary phenomena of human life, according as the 
development of human characteristics progresses, together 
with those phenomena which have the appearance of being 
exceptional, render more and more evident that this signally 
honourable psychic affection is an essential attribute of man. 
Now the word duty implies that in the matter with respect 
to which it is used something is conceived as being due 
(debitum). If, however, for due we substitute wanting (€or), 
we get a concept which is preferable, as involving no other 
assumption than is ultimately reached in the process of 
analysing the notion which the noun in question represents ; 
and thus, on the supposition that the experiences which 
originated and have perpetuated the notion afford materials 
available for the elaboration of a science, Deontology may 
claim to be accepted as its most appropriate name. 
But although duty implies that something is wanting, the 
sense of duty is not an intellectual perception of the deficiency, 
but a kind of feeling which virtually acknowledges an 
authoritative command to supply it, to fill up, so to speak, 
the discovered void. It may, indeed, occur to me to say to 
myself “J ought,” whenI am simply taking account of the 
fact that an object which I have in view, but which, as it 
may seem to me, is, so far as concerns my intervention, 
without moral significance, presupposes in the chain of its 
conditioning antecedents some possible act of mine. My 
wish, for instance, being to ensure accuracy in some arith- 
metical calculation I have made for my amusement, my 
thought perhaps may be “I ought to proceed now by some 
other method, and then compare the second result with the 
first.” Phrases which, strictly speaking, point to duty are 
frequently employed in reference to acts wherein, rightly or 
wrongly, the only laws whereof cognizance is taken are but 
delimitations of what is practicable, together with such rules 
as define what the agent imagines to be conducive to his 
profit, pleasure. or convenience. Although, however, meta- 
phorical applications may render words equivocal, and in the 
habitual and unstudied use of conventional phraseology their 
proper meanings are liable to escape attention, the genuine 
sense of duty has a character peculiar to itself, and, where it 
has once found place, admits of no guileless confusion with 
any other kind of experience. The nature of the case, I need 
hardly remark, forbids that, having made this assertion, L 
