Duty: Twelve Conferences to Young Men

I. Meaning and Source of Duty

As the best goods are said to be packed in small parcels, so great thoughts are often expressed in short words. Such words as God, the soul, life, death, duty are of no great length, yet to the thinker how deeply rich and suggestive they are. World-wide controversies rage, ever have raged, and presumably ever will rage, round their meaning, origin, and application. Now, it is to the last of these little words, viz., duty, that I mean to draw your attention, in a few homely discourses, during the next twelve months. The use of the word duty, by all men, in all times, and in all tongues, is witness to its reality and importance. Though a dry topic, yet this fact, as well as the close connection of duty with our happiness here and beyond, offer sufficient apology for its choice. To-day I propose to speak:

I. Of its meaning. II. Of its source or origin.

I. There are many words in a language apparently easy and commonplace, and yet so subtle, elusive and many-sided as almost to baffle analysis and definition. Of such is the word duty. It is on everybody’s lips; and yet it is not very easy to put its meaning clearly and tersely in other words. Speaking loosely, duty is what we ought to do. It implies what is due by us to others, and is said to sum up what we morally owe to God, our neighbor and ourselves. It tells us, in one short term, what we are bound, i. e., what we ought to think, say and do, by virtue of the great moral law or law of God.

Thus, the noun duty and the verb ought embody the whole science of ethics, from a rational, and of moral theology, from a Christian standpoint. The word duty reminds us of a debt, which, as honest men, we must do our best to pay. For a moral being to shirk duty, i. e., to refuse to pay his life-debt, when he both can and ought to, is dishonest, a failing to pay what is strictly due. Debt never gets off the conscience till paid; so it is with duty, it is a kill-joy and a mar-feast, ever reminding us, as long as it is left unfulfilled, that we are placed in this world, not to do what we like, but what we ought. To have joy in life we must make peace with it, as “with our enemy in the way,” for it is the sworn enemy of pleasure unless we come to terms with it.

Though duty connotes law, it is distinct from it. Duty is subjective and personal, law objective and impersonal. Laws in the moral order are rules of conduct emanating from some being endowed with authority to frame and have them carried out. Duty is compliance therewith. Our attitude toward all just laws affecting us should be one of duty. Spiritually duty is the same as obedience to lawful superiors. In the abstract, it may be described as the binding force of what is morally right. It is defined by Webster as “That which a person is bound, by any natural, moral or legal obligation, to do or refrain from doing.” Like most other words, it is used by transfer of meaning in other senses. Thus, it is often limited to service, civil or military, applied to certain forms of work, taxes and the rest; but we here use the word duty in the sense above described, i. e., as compliance with the moral law, discharge of the obligations binding on us by the law of God and its legitimate extensions.

To get a good hold of what is meant by the term duty, it will help us to reflect that law means order or regularity in any and every sphere of action—material, intellectual, or moral; hence we speak of the laws of nature, the laws of mind or thought, and the laws or rules of conduct. God as supremely intelligent and moral, by the very force of His nature, must wish order to be observed, or kept, in nature, mind, and conduct. “Order is heaven’s first law.” By the light of common intelligence we perceive this. A well-balanced mind revolts against disorder and confusion in every department, and feels an instinctive desire to put all the “crooked things of life” straight. Science, art, truth, conduct are all a perception of the need of order. To break God’s order entails evil. If we break the laws of nature we may bring on ourselves sickness or death; if we run counter to the laws of thought, we fall into error, and if we infringe those of conduct or duty, we fall into the greatest evil of all, sin. The moral order, which it must be God’s will for every free intelligent being to observe, is called the moral law, the rules of which it is our duty to keep, and which, indeed, form the sum of our duty. Now this moral rectitude, this straightness of soul, this good conduct or behavior, is the object of duty, or rather is duty itself. It makes what we call an all-round honest man, and an “honest man” is truly “the noblest work of God.” As Matthew Arnold says, “Good conduct is nineteen-twentieths of life.” All moralists hold this view, whatever their opinions, as to the basis or origin of duty. Deflection from duty, or ordered conduct, is living down and away from the fulness of life. Morality, another name for duty, is admittedly the highest function of man. Physically, a man may be as strong as Hercules; intellectually, he may rival Solomon or Plato, and yet if he is immoral, i. e., undutiful, unmindful of the rules of good conduct, he is condemned, and rightly condemned, as false, as untrue to the lofty ideal of human nature, as we feel it should be, and as we know it to be wrong and sinful not to be. The moral plane, or plane of duty, is felt to be the highest, as indeed it is the chief meritorious plane of life. We do not blame a man for being in body weak or ugly, or mentally stupid; but we do blame him for being immoral or undutiful.

Again, duty, it must be remembered, is quite the antithesis of pleasure or self-interest; nay, it is often in complete antagonism to both. No doubt it would be both agreeable and useful for a poor man, with a starving wife and child, to find and keep the purse of a Morgan or a Rockefeller, dropped accidentally in the street, and yet duty, plain, commonplace duty, compels him to return that purse without abstracting a single cent, even though the owner were neither to know of the loss nor would perceptibly suffer from the loss if he did. Duty is hard, stern, unrelenting. It is pitiless and merciless to passion, pleasure, and in some respects to self-interest alike. It tells us emphatically, through the voice of conscience, to do what is right and shun what is wrong, be the consequences what they may. When duty is in question, mere calculation of gain or pleasure is irrelevant! As well weigh spirit against matter, or virtue against gold, as duty against carnal pleasure, or worldly wisdom. For duty, I repeat, means what is due, by you and me, to God and our neighbor, and that in justice we ought and must pay. However high the standard of Christian duty may be, yet what in duty we are bound to do or omit, that, with God’s grace, we can both do or omit.

II. So much for the meaning of the term duty. We have now to examine whence springs its binding force. Why should I be morally forced to do what is right, and avoid what is wrong? All moralists own that we ought to do our duty, but differ as to why, or on what basis this moral obligation rests. Is the foundation of duty within or without ourselves? Is man autonomous, i. e., a law to himself; merely seeing the need of ordered conduct, and acting accordingly, without any reference to or dependence on any light, law, or authority other than that furnished by reason? Is duty or morality independent of a divine Lawgiver enlightening reason and binding conscience?

Remember, this is not an idle, useless, or merely dogmatic question. It is vital to the very notion or idea of duty. If duty originates with self or other men, if there is no right to command outside of or beyond ourselves, why do we feel stung with grief and remorse on leaving duty unfulfilled? In fact, if duty is based only on reason, without reference to external authority, why should there be any such thing as duty at all? Why should I, irrespective of all consequences, obey any one power of my soul rather than another? Why obey the law of reason any more than the law of lust? Why, if so inclined, should I not be free to follow my animal instincts in preference to my rational? If self has no master to dictate what is right or wrong, in the line of duty, then all that self approves of may be right and justifiable—free love, suicide, and the rest. If there is no element in duty but what is human, then it is based or resolved into force, on the one hand, for the sake of public order; or, on the other, license, i. e., unrestricted freedom to do what one likes—in other words, there is no such thing as duty. “In those days there was no king in Israel, but everyone did that which seemed right to himself” (Judges xxi, 24). The result of this craze for independent morality, i. e., duty not based on dogma, is seen in the attack directed by unbelievers to-day, not so much on speculative belief, as against the practical authority of Christian duty. Formerly the idea of duty or conduct, as proclaimed by Christ and His Church, was deemed impregnable. Rationalism even admitted our moral code as the most perfect treasure of the age, even when tracing it to a merely human origin by way of evolution. To-day in romance, in poetry, in drama, duty is assailed as an undue interference with liberty, and pleasure put to the front. “Let us eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die” is an ideal of life commonly taught both on and off the stage. The assault on dogma is no longer limited to Christian belief, but extends even to Christian ethics, i. e., to duty. As an appeal to passion, against pure reason, and clad in the garb, or rather mask, of science, it meets with considerable success among the crowd, and is a veritable trap to the unwary.

Now to escape this disaster we must get a thorough idea of the groundwork of duty from a Catholic, and, let me add, rational point of view. First of all, there is no special sense or faculty of duty. It is rooted in the understanding or reason—reason, not independent of, but subject to and enlightened by God the Supreme Reason. Duty or morality is not the quality of an action, like color, weight, or shape; but is known and wilful conformity with a law, founded on reason and binding in conscience. As well say that the eye is independent of light for vision, as to say that our reason, through which duty is apprehended, is independent of God—the “Light of lights.” Duty is rooted in the felt obligation to obey God or His lawful representatives; and the voice of conscience enforcing it in the same act implicitly reveals God as lawgiver or supreme framer of duty. Duty is thus, in its origin, the voice of the Eternal; and it is mere sophistry, a juggle of words and ideas, to try to make it out a creation, or outcome of the human mind. It sprang from the inmost life and supreme reason of God: and was traced in rude outline on the heart, or reason of man, as a rule of conduct peculiar and suitable to free self-determining beings. Its essence is to mold that conduct not in conformity with the passing ephemeral fashions of time, but with a higher standard of law, fixed, unchangeable, and universal—the moral law, tersely put in the Ten Commandments, which sum up the whole duty of man. Now this is only found in basing duty ultimately on the supreme reason of God, recognizing order, and willing, which is the same as decreeing, it to be observed. Duty divorced from religion, and not based on God, loses all its force to sway the heart and mold the whole conduct of man. If not rooted in God, it dwindles, at best, into a cold, lifeless branch of human law, held up only by brute force. As experience shows, duty reared not on the fluctuating reason or varying opinions of men, but on the transcendence and independence of God, can alone sustain moral effort in the mass of mankind. Duty that does not strike root in the divine element of religion deals only with outward acts, leaving untouched the whole field of motive, which we all feel to be the very soul of duty. Gain, or greed, or lust, or other base motives may be at the back of deeds of heroism apparently, yet they rob these very deeds of the sacred name of duty.

Hence nearly all nations have sought for the sanction of the duties imposed on their citizens in religion. However false or visionary, yet what appeared to them as the “high will of heaven” seemed the only solid foundation on which to raise their laws and base the duty of the people called upon to observe them.

But it may be said that people are and were moral, i. e., obedient to the call of duty, without either knowledge of or reference to God whatsoever, nay, that there are many moralists who perhaps do not believe in God at all. Buddhists and others have a very strict code of duty, without belief in a personal God of any kind. Any man, moreover, may be honest and dutiful without being religious.

The reply is obvious. We sing and play without adverting to the theory of sound on which music is based. We think and will, and otherwise energize, without paying heed to the soul in which these actions are rooted. We live in a house without minding the foundations on which it is built. By reflection and analysis we come to recognize that the source of moral truth, as of all truth, is in the divine Mind. We likewise feel in the impulse of conscience the divine Will commanding this moral truth or order in conduct to be kept. To do right it is not necessary to advert to its origin. Even if there were no human mind or reason in existence, it would still be eternally true and binding that “good is to be done and evil avoided.”

Duty is not, be it remembered, an arbitrary enactment of the divine Will. It lay in the vision of the divine Mind. Duty as moral truth precedes it as volition. Conduct is not moral or immoral, not commanded or forbidden, because God willed it to be so; but He willed the moral law, or order, or duty, or law of nature, to be obeyed because in His divine mind He saw it to be right. The perception of duty, or obligation of living up to moral order, as the standard of conduct is prior in the order of thought, i. e., antecedent to God’s commands that it should be observed. Duty, therefore, is not only conformable to right reason, which is also divine reason, but is also the expression of the divine Will. He must wish us to act in conformity with reason, and this will of His is law in our regard. A breach of duty is a breach also of the divine Will or law. It is thus a sin. Hence it follows that sin or moral evil is more than an infraction of right reason. It is an offense against God. Men at all times and in all religions have felt and taught the transgression of duty to be a violation of the order willed and approved by God. The remorse and pain felt by conscience in a breach of duty bears witness to this. No doubt the perception of duty varies both in nations and individuals, according to their intelligence, education, and religion; still it is at least rudimentary in all—sufficient to make them answerable for their conduct, and so deserving of praise or blame.

The feeling of sinfulness or wrong doing that arises in the soul when we wilfully fail in duty proves clearly its divine origin. If duty had no higher source than reason or custom, we should feel no remorse in secretly breaking it. We may infringe all the laws of good breeding, etiquette, good taste in the world, we may violate all the rules of science and art, and yet never feel a twinge of remorse; but we can not transgress the laws of justice, we can not steal, lie, or blaspheme, without feeling that we have done morally wrong, that we have violated the will of God, who planted the sense of duty within us. It is only the divine element in human law, i. e., the divine sanction, or approval of it, that makes us ever feel guilty of a breach of duty in transgressing it.

Duty, therefore, as I said, is based on the divine Will commanding order to be kept; and the rules that go to make up this order form the moral law, often called the divine law, or law of nature.

The perception of this law in general outline, called the knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil, is traced on the mind of every human being endowed with reason, and, more than aught else, distinguishes man from the beasts. Its observance raises us immensely above them, just as its transgression degrades us below them. Whatever they do, they remain innocent; we, by a breach of duty, become sinful. For we are free, they are not. They are the slaves of their animal instincts; we are, or ought to be, the masters of ours. There is no compulsion, no restraint in the law of duty. We are free to keep or break the moral law, but we can not escape the consequences of either course. We are still by duty under the law, even when disregarding it. Duty ever binds. We may do as we like; but we still remain bound to do as we ought. We may slay, steal or slander; but always at our own risk and peril. No lawgiver, much less the Supreme Lawgiver, who has written His law on our hearts, will allow his laws to be broken with impunity. Pains and penalties, remember, ever follow a free transgression of duty. Every law, as we shall see, has its sanction.

By way of conclusion, I may say, that two thoughts have engaged our attention up to the present—the meaning of duty and the foundation on which it rests. Divested of technical language, duty is keeping the moral order or law made known to us by enlightened reason and conscience. It is thus the harmony of human conduct with divine law. Its proximate basis is the will of God expressly ordering this law or order to be observed. To trifle with the order called the law of nature, is to invite swift and stern retribution: water drowns, fire burns, poison slays, without pity or mercy; and so the violation of the higher order of duty brings on us the terrible evil of sin—prelude and threat of untold disaster to follow.

Can anything better be said of duty than that it is doing God’s will; can anything worse be said of not doing it than that such conduct is a violation of His will? Duty, therefore, sums up all that is worth living for in this world.

Two paths lie before young men to-day: the path of duty and the path of pleasure. They are free to choose either. One is doing God’s will, the other is doing our own. The one is living up to the best that is in us, the other is living down to the worst.

Speaking as “one less wise,” putting the matter on the low level of worldly wisdom, duty pays; pleasure leads surely and fatally to bankruptcy both of body and soul. Except as a rest from toil and as a stimulant to duty, pleasure is fraudulent. It can never lawfully be an end, only a means, to something better and higher. It will land any young man who takes it as his aim and main object in life into weariness, disillusion, disappointment and despair. A soul given over to it has only before it a vision of lost time, wasted opportunities, blighted hopes, the bitterness and sorrow that invariably haunt the pleasure seeker of living, and having lived, an idle, worthless, godless life. Duty, no doubt, has its trials and pains; but they brace up and strengthen the soul. They bring peace and well-being and the respect and esteem of one’s friends. The sweetness of pleasure is but honeyed poison; the weariness of duty is soon past; its memories are ever sweet and its reward never-ending.

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