results; and since the moral restraining motive is mainly formed of
represented future results; it happens that the representations,
having much in common, and being often aroused at the same time, the
fear joined with three sets of them becomes, by association, joined
with the fourth. Thinking of the extrinsic effects of a forbidden act,
excites a dread which continues present while the intrinsic effects
of the act are thought of; and being thus linked with these intrinsic
effects causes a vague sense of moral compulsion. Emerging as the moral
motive does but slowly from amidst the political, religious and social
motives it long participates in that consciousness of subordination
to some external agency which is joined with them; and only as
it becomes distinct and predominant does it lose this associated
consciousness--only then does the feeling of obligation fade.
This remark implies the tacit conclusion, which will be to most very
startling, that the sense of duty or moral obligation is transitory,
and will diminish as fast as moralization increases. Startling
though it is, this conclusion may be satisfactorily defended. Even
now progress toward the implied ultimate state is traceable. The
observation is not infrequent that persistence in performing a duty
ends in making it a pleasure; and this amounts to the admission that
while at first the motive contains an element of coercion, at last
this element of coercion dies out, and the act is performed without
any consciousness of being obliged to perform it. The contrast between
the youth on whom diligence is enjoined, and the man of business so
absorbed in affairs that he cannot be induced to relax, shows us
how the doing of work, originally under the consciousness that it
_ought_ to be done, may eventually cease to have any such accompanying
consciousness. Sometimes, indeed, the relation comes to be reversed;
and the man of business persists in work from pure love of it when told
that he ought not. Nor is it thus with self-regarding feelings only.
That the maintaining and protecting of wife by husband often result
solely from feelings directly gratified by these actions, without any
thought of _must_; and that the fostering of children by parents is in
many cases made an absorbing occupation without any coercive feeling
of _ought_; are obvious truths which show us that even now, with some
of the fundamental other-regarding duties, the sense of obligation has
retreated into the background of the mind. And it is in some degree so
with other-regarding duties of a higher kind. Conscientiousness has in
many outgrown that stage in which the sense of a compelling power is
joined with rectitude of action. The truly honest man, here and there
to be found, is not only without thought of legal, religious, or social
compulsion, when he discharges an equitable claim on him, but he is
without thought of self-compulsion. He does the right thing with a
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