the unfortunate importation of a confusion from jurisprudence. In Roman law, laws of imperfect obligation are "laws which speak the desires of political superiors, but which their authors (by oversight or design) have not provided with sanction." Such imperfect laws are in reality not laws at all, but counsels or exhortations. They have, strictly speaking, no obligation. Some moralists have adopted the expression, and have given a new meaning to it. Speaking of imperfect obligation, they commonly mean duties which are not legal, duties imposed by command of God, or duties imposed by positive morality, as contradistinguished to duties imposed by positive law." In this sense imperfect obligation means religious or moral obligation, as opposed to political (Austin, "Lect. on Jurisp.," vol. i., p. 102). Duties thus enforced by the machinery of government are sometimes called determinate, while the others are called indeterminate—officia juris and officia virtutis.

§ 7. Virtue.

We must distinguish between excellencies of conduct and excellencies of character which lead to the production of them. It is the latter which are properly called virtues. They are habits or tendencies of character which lead us to the performance of acts which are in accordance with the ideal of conduct formed by the best men of our time. Such tenden

1 Cf. Aristotle, "Nic. Eth.," book ii., chap. vii.

cies are tendencies to act in a certain way and to feel in a certain way-the latter being a point somewhat overlooked by Aristotle-and they are acquired at any rate in part by practice of good acts, although they may be in some cases largely due to native endowment.

The term virtue is, however, sometimes applied to the acts themselves. It does not seem correct to say that this usage is metaphorical, and that "virtuous. conduct means conduct which proves the virtue of the doer." A man is said to "make a virtue of necessity," and we call an act "virtuous," meaning that it is in accordance with the accepted ideals of conduct, or the demands of moral law. But in this use the word tends to be limited in its application to acts which are distinctly somewhat more excellent than those which are regarded as in the most stringent sense binding on all, to the class of acts which are called meritorious. We do not call paying our butcher's bill a virtuous act. In fact, in this usage of the term virtuous the idea of merit is involved, and when merit cannot be predicated, we do not speak of the act as virtuous. This, as we have seen, implies the jural view of ethics, but implies further that this view is transcended, that the prescriptions of moral law are not the ultimate possibilities of moral excellence.

Again, the terms virtuous and virtue, as applied to character, have each been restricted in popular usage to chastity, especially in regard to women, with regard to whom this particular excellence takes a very

high, indeed the highest place. In the same way vice has been popularly used with special reference to bad sexual conduct. Moralists have hardly done their duty in so far as they have failed to point out the distorting effects on popular morality of this one-sided restriction.

§ 8. Merit.

An act which is of more than ordinary goodness is often called meritorious. The term implies either that the act is specially difficult to the ordinary man, or is specially difficult for the doer, and that therefore the moral law does not require the act, or, at any rate, not the degree of perfection in the act which is actually attained. This idea of merit obviously depends on the jural view of morality being taken, and stands in some opposition to duty. What duty requires strictly is not a source of merit; merit comes in where strict obligation no longer exists. If we comply with a higher law not rigidly binding on us we have merit or desert. This may be looked on as a sort of debt owed us by God, by the State, or by our fellow-men; who if they act justly will not only consider us free from desert of punishment, but as actually worthy of approval. But "in his own judgment a morally developed man does not inquire what will give him a claim to receive praise, but simply what is right; and he does not compare himself to others, but with his own moral ideal. Therefore, in reference to himself, he

knows only duty, not desert" (Gizycki and Coit, p. 103).

$9. Responsibility.

Responsibility means answerableness. A man is responsible to his employers for his use of their money or goods; he can be called upon to give an account of that which has been entrusted to his care. By an extension of the idea we speak of a man's responsibility to a political superior for the employment of his time or activity. In this wide sense of the word, to say that a person is responsible is to say that he can be punished.

The conditions under which it is possible for a man to be legally responsible, i.e., to be under legal obligation with regard to an act, are fixed somewhat arbitrarily by law. For instance, a man is sometimes held responsible for injury done to others by his servants, even if they are not acting on an implied command from him, thus in most countries an innkeeper is bound to make restitution for robberies committed by his servants, while this is not the case with other masters. The conditions of moral responsibility, on the other hand, are determined by the psychological condition of the individual, without regard to consequences; hence moral and legal responsibility often rest on quite different persons.

1

1 The object of the law is to bring pressure to bear on innkeepers to take the greatest care to ensure the honesty of their

servants.

F

The conditions of moral responsibility seem to be:

(1) Knowledge of the nature and conditions of the act. This must be an actual present knowledge, and not a merely constructive knowledge. There must be full consciousness for responsibility to be complete. But yet we are obliged to assume that the temporary forgetfulness due to passion does not absolve. Strictly speaking we ought to say that a person who does wrong in a passion is not responsible for the act then committed, but for the original evil of getting into the passion. And so with regard to drunkenness; although

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per vinum delapsis capitalis pœna remittitur," yet the original fault of taking too much wine is punishable. If a man produces mental disease by taking nervous stimulants, we do not hold him responsible for any further immoral act he may commit, but only for the course of conduct which made it possible or even probable.

(2) Knowledge of the rule which the act contravenes. Here there is divergence between legal and moral responsibility. Ignorance of the law does not excuse in law. But it certainly does in morality, subject to the same exceptions mentioned above, viz., that the ignorance be not itself due to our own fault.

(3) Power of choice. There must be no external compulsion, physical or mental. Compulsion may (it is usually said) take the form of (a) actual force, such as binding or gagging, or (b) "duress per minas," that is, threats so dreadful and instant as to destroy