Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/754

734 parts of the human constitution, and out of them spring all the details of ethical life. Nor are we called on to discuss the origin of the sentiment of obligation, since we are warranted in holding that it also belongs to the essence of human nature. No man, so far as our information goes, has ever been found to be destitute of it, and, as far as concerns our world, it may be regarded as founded in the nature of things. It is the basis of all moral development. The only question that need be asked is whether it is at all dependent on religion for its essential character—that is to say, at the moment when this sentiment was shaping itself in the mind of man, was its genesis at all conditioned on the recognition of the supernatural? In the decision of such a question we can be guided, of course, only by data of our own consciousness. But the reference to the supernatural does not seem to help the matter much, since we meet here at the outset this same sentiment of obligation. What is the origin of the convictions of duty which man feels toward the unseen powers around him? Does it spring from the recognition of their superiority of position? But this is nothing more than the recognition of a relation which involves the power of harming or helping in the superior being, and, so far as the same power is supposed to reside in men, the same sentiment toward them will arise. Or does the feeling of duty toward the gods come from the recognition of rights belonging to them? Then it does not appear why there should not be a similar recognition of rights belonging to men, since in the earliest conceptions there is no difference between man and the deity, except in the point of power. It does not seem, therefore, that religion has been effective in producing the feeling of obligation, except so far as it has added to the objects toward which this feeling was directed. There would be just as much ground for holding that the sentiment of religious obligation sprang from the feeling of duty which arose between man and man. In point of fact, no doubt, both were products of the same primitive elements of man's constitution. The recognition of an object implies the recognition both of its nature and of those powers in it by which it affects us for good or for bad, and from the interplay of these ideas comes finally the conviction that the object has certain rights; we first perceive and estimate the personality, and then, through experience and reflection, come to the conclusion that it is obligatory on us to allow it such freedom as is consistent with the freedom of other personalities. The degree of liberty we allow will be, in general, in proportion to the power of the personality: men can be controlled by equal powers; the gods, wielding irresistible power, will enjoy perfect liberty. The two sorts of feeling of duty, toward man and toward the deity, grow by mutual action and reaction; each, as it becomes more refined