DEONTOLOGY. 301 
derived from ‘‘deo ” to tie, and ‘obligation’ derived from “ ob- 
ligare ” to bind together. 
I am not only satisfied of the identity of the reasoning faculty 
in the lower animals, but I am also satisfied that there is in 
some of them at least the indication of an inchoate sense of 
morality. I would refer to the notion that dogs have of property 
and its rights, for that involves in itself the notion of their being 
obliged by some authority or principle that they recognise to restrain 
themselves from something they would much like to have appro- 
priated to their own use. 
The latter part of the Author’s most interesting Paper refers to 
a subject which lies at the bottom of it all, that is the sense of 
moral obligation. We look ata treatise on moral philosophy of 
Socrates or Plato, and we see that that is the real difficulty with 
which they feel they have to contend. A man who is not disposed 
to do what he should do says “ Why should I doso?” In the 
Platonic dialogues, reporting the discourses of Socrates, there is a 
higher notiou presented, for he has a knowledge of higher obliga- 
tions which impose on man higher duties ; but when you come to 
Stoicism all you find is simply the didactic statement that he must 
do it; and you again ask, Why ? and then a most valuable part of 
this Paper comes in. We all know the great distinction that is 
drawn by writers on jurisprudence, which has been so much 
threshed out lately—that, as a fundamental notion, law is nothing. 
You say “obey the law”; but unless the law has an executive 
power to compel its performance, it is no more powerful than a 
mere expression of opinion; but when you bring it, as the Author 
has so ably done, to a Christian system, you are carried to some- 
thing higher than the mere existence of an abstract law—you are 
brought to the knowledge of that which keeps alive the conscience, 
so that in everything you do you have the abiding consciousness of 
the will of a Personal Being who is above you, to whom you are 
tied and bound so that you cannot shake yourself loose from the 
bond, and then you find a sanction that is wanting to all the 
heathen ethical precepts. A very common error is committed 
by persons who derive their notions on moral subjects from French 
writers, owing to a mistranslation of the word “ conscience.” The 
word “ conscience ” in French means merely “‘ consciousness,” and 
yet you constantly find it treated as meaning “ conscience” in 
our English use of that word, and all that “ conscience ” with us 
b 
Agey.. 
