Thus, the general process which we have called “internalization” can be traced working itself out into all kinds of details; not only in that intimate, metaphysical change of outlook which it is so hard for us to realize now that the change has taken place—in the appearance of words betokening a sharper self-consciousness—but also in the moral and personal sphere. We could, for instance, take such a common word as _duty_ and mark its expansion of meaning at about the time of Shakespeare. By its derivation it carries the sense of ‘owing’ and it meant in Chaucer’s time an act of obedience which was owed to some other person—usually to a feudal superior.[51] It is not till the close of the sixteenth century that it begins to take on its modern sense of a more or less _abstract_ moral obligation—an obligation owed, if to any being, to oneself or to a sort of ideal of manhood—such an ideal, for instance, as is expressed in the word _gentleman_. Later on, as with _conscience_, there is a tendency to personify it. At the beginning of the seventeenth century we first find the word _Nature_ employed in contexts where medieval writers would certainly have used the single word _God_. _Spontaneous_ has already been mentioned, and it is interesting to note a certain tendency, which seems to have been inherent, before Shakespeare’s time, in the adjective _voluntary_, to connote disapproval when it was applied to human actions or feelings. Later in the century the word _character_[52] was first used in its modern personal sense by the historian Clarendon.