DEONTOLOGY. 299 
the strictures of the Chairman with regard to the substitution of 
something wanting, as being worse than the idea of obligation, and 
I think the Author himself virtually admits that the idea of duty is 
obligation. I notice on the second page the Author says this— 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.” But what is that but saying that the 
sense of duty is a kind of feeling which virtually acknowledges a 
duty to supply it? The idea of duty is apparently a consciousness 
of the supremacy of law, or, to put it rather more clearly, the 
consciousness of the supremacy of the supreme law. If I defined 
duty in that way, I should be disposed to define conscience in some 
such way as this,—‘‘Conscience, or the moral faculty, is that which 
approves or disapproves actions, according as they agree or dis- 
agree with the supreme law.” The Author thinks, as I understand 
him, that there is in brutes a psychic sense of duty which leads 
them to avoid doing certain actions. Their sense of duty, if it 
may be so called, is not, however, natural to the brute, as you do 
not find it in wild animals. It is, whatever it be, the result of 
some training, and does not seem to rise higher than man. The 
sense of duty in man, is, I apprehend, innate,—existing as 
thoroughly in the infant and the savage. What is developed is 
not, I think, a sense of duty—that is the consciousness of the 
supremacy of the supreme law—but the intellectual discernment 
and judgment with regard to which that sense of duty is fre- 
quently and commonly exercised. The conviction that robbery is 
wrong, that injustice is wrong, is as thoroughly perfect in a child 
as itis inacultured man. The difference between them is not, I 
think, in that, but in the intellectual discernment of what is 
robbery, and what is injustice. Once seen that the thing isa 
robbery, the conscience rebukes that just as much in a child ora 
savage as in a cultured man, but the cultured man would be able | 
to say to such action, “It is wrong,’ whereas perhaps the child 
would not be able to say this, for want of intellectual perception or 
judgment. Taking this view of duty, I cannot agree with the 
Author that there are two kinds of sense of duty in man, viz., the 
psychic and pneumatic, which may be in conflict with one another. 
It appears to me if duty says we ought todoa thing it is im- 
possible that there should be a conflict of duties. Whatever I 
ought to do is supreme, and it is quite impossible that I ought to do 
