L independently. Why should I act independently? that I may act rightly. Hence, with regard to the Supreme Rule, the question Why? admits of no further answer. Why must I do what is right? Because it is right. Why should I do what I ought? Because I ought. The Supreme Rule supplies a reason for that which it commands, by being the Supreme Rule. 76. Rightness and Wrongness are, as we have already said, the Moral qualities of actions. The Rules which, in subordination to the Supreme Rule, determine what is right and what is wrong, are Moral Rules. The doctrine which treats of actions as right and wrong, is Morality. 77. Since, as we have seen (58), Moral Rules are necessary, according to the constitution of human nature; Man is necessarily a Moral Being. 78. We have now to establish Moral Rules; and for that purpose, we must consider in what kind of Terms they must be expressed. Among those Terms must be Rights; and Rights must exist, as we proceed to show. Rules of human action must be expressed by means of words denoting those abstract and general Conceptions which include the principal objects of human desire and affection. And, in order that these Conceptions may regulate men's actions, they must be Conceptions of something which really exists among men. If they are not this, they cannot, by their operation, balance, moderate, check and direct the desires and affections which tend to really existing objects. For instance, my desire to possess what another has, may be checked and controlled by the Conception of Property; by my looking upon it as his Property. But this could not happen, if there were no such thing as Property. If Property had not been a reality among men, the Conception of it could never have had the power, which in human Society it constantly has had, to suppress or moderate the greater part of the acts to which the bodily desires, and the desire of having, would naturally impel men. In like manner, the Conceptions of Promises, of Contract, of Marriage, and the like, restrain or limit most of the acts to which the uncontrolled desires and affections would give rise. This must necessarily be, in order that Rules of action may operate upon men; but this could not be, if the things thus conceived did not really exist among men. : Further the conceptions on which Rules of action depend must not only be realized among men, but their results must also be assigned and appropriated to particular men. The realities which are conceived.as Property, as Personal Security, as Contract, as Marriage, must be attached to persons, and vested in them, as attributes or possessions. We must be able to conceive such things, as being one man's or another man's: as my property, your debt, his wife. Without this condition, the Rules of which we speak could not produce their effect of counteracting and balancing the Desires and Affections. For the Desires and Affections are tendencies to action residing in Persons. Each Person's Desires have a tendency to himself: the Affections have Persons for their objects; the Desires of things also give rise to Affections towards Persons. Since all these tendencies to action are thus directed to and from Persons, the Rules of action, which balance these tendencies, must also point to Persons. My desire to take away what another man has, and my anger against him for witholding it from me, must be balanced by the thought that it is his Property. To use a mathematical image, the centers of the forces, attractive and repulsive, which we have termed Springs of Action, are in Persons; and therefore the Conceptions by which these forces are kept in equilibrium must also point to Persons. The Rules of Action, being Moral Rules, must necessarily be subordinate to the Supreme Rule of human action; and combining this condition with the two others of which we have spoken, we are led to this conclusion: That in order that Moral Rules may exist, there must be abstract Conceptions, including the principal objects of human desire and affection; which abstract Conceptions must be Realities, vested in particular Persons as attributes or possessions, according to Rules subordinate to the Supreme Rule of Human Action. But Abstractions vested in particular Persons, as possessions, by Rules subordinate to the Supreme Rule, are Rights; and our conclusion may be expressed by saying, That in order that Moral Rules may exist, Men must have Rights. We have already given examples of Rights; such as a man's Right to his Personal Safety, to his Property, to his Debts, to his Wife. Without supposing the existence of such Rights, no Moral Rules can be given. 79. What has been said in general (65 and 78), to prove the necessary existence of Moral Rules, and therefore, of Rights, among men; may be further illustrated by considering, separately, the principal Springs of Action of which we have spoken; and especially the Mental Desires; for these include the Appetites and the Affections (49). It is evident that the Desire of Personal Safety (39) requires that there should exist a Right of Personal Safety. Without such a Right, the Desire would give rise to a constant tempest of Anger and Fear, arising from the assaults, actual or apprehended, of other men. But a Right of Personal Safety, when actually established, holds in check the impulses which give rise to such assaults, and reduces the tempest to a calm. In this calm, man, free from extreme agitations of Fear and Anger, can act with a reference to Rules founded on other men's Rights; and can thus, and no otherwise, exercise his rational and moral nature. And in like manner, the Desire of Having requires that there should exist a Right of Property: for without the establishment of such a Right, the possession of any objects of desire would, in like manner, give rise to Fear and Anger; and to an agitation of men's minds, in which rational and moral action could not take place. But a Right of Property once established, there may be a state of repose, in which the Reason and the Moral Sentiments can act. Again, the Need of Mutual Understanding requires that a Right of Contract should exist. If no man could depend upon the actions of other men, every man's actions must be performed in a tumult of vague conjectures, hopes and fears, like the actions of a man when surrounding objects are whirled about him by shifting winds. Each man having no certainty as to what another man would do, Society must be dissolved by the repulsion of conflicting Desires and mutual Fears. But if the Right of Contract be established, so that one man can depend upon what another has contracted to do, as something certain; the mutual Fears are removed; the objects included in the Contracts, and the intentions of the Contractors, become stable things; and man can act with reference to fixed moral Rules, as his moral nature requires. Again, the Desire of Family Society requires the establishment of Family Rights; that is, of those peculiar Rights, respecting the Members of the Family, to which the Desires point. The Husband must have an exclusive Right to the Society of the Wife, as a Wife. The Father must have Rights over his Children, which other men have not. Without these ties, which bind Families together in a manner in some respects exclusive, ungoverned bodily Desire and irregular Affection would tend to transient and capricious unions of man and woman; and these would lead to storms of angry rivalry, and the pains of deserted affection. Moreover, on this supposition, the suffering mother and the starving child have no one to depend on the child has no one to educate him; to introduce him into Human Society; to bring him acquainted with the Rules of Action of mankind; and thus to evoke his rational and moral nature. In the bosom of the Family, when its inclosure is protected by Family Rights, the woman and the child are sustained through seasons of helplessness, the desires of Family Society are gratified, and the moral nature of man is unfolded; and thus Family Rights necessarily exist. In the same manner, the Desire of Civil Society requires a peculiar Class of Rights, which we shall call the Rights of Government. For the actual establishment of Rights is the actual enforcement of Rules; and this requires that the office of enforcing Rules should be committed to some special body of men, as the guardians of the Rules. In order that Rights may really exist in a society, the Governors of the Society must have the Right of enforcing the Rules by which such Rights are defined. If such a Right be not vested in the Governors, other Rights, however they may be nominally acknowledged, do not really exist in the Society. If Personal Security and Property, and Contract, and Marriage be spoken of as actual realities; but if, notwithstanding this, the Right of Government to inforce the consequences of these realities be not upheld; there are, in fact, no real Rights in such a Society; and in proportion as the unreality of the Rights of Government becomes manifest, the Society loses its social character; and the moral character of man cannot find its sphere of action in such a condition. : 80. There are other Rights, required by other Desires but none of so primary and universal a character as those which I have now mentioned. The Desire of Knowledge requires Rights which, under the names of the Right of Self Culture, the Right of Education, the Right of Freedom of Opinion, and the like, may come to be of importance, |