CHAPTER VI

MORAL RIGHTS.

(INTUITIONAL THEORY.)

1. As moral obligation signifies an imposed necessity of acting in accordance with moral law, it implies the right of the moral being, without restraint from others, to engage in the forms of activity thus required. This is the natural and inalienable right of personality,-To act according to Conscience. God has in the constitution of our nature provided for it; and our fellow-men can have no warrant to restrict it.

Right here is jus in contrast with honestum or rectum. Hence jurisprudence, the Science of Law, is properly the Science of human Rights, for, as Hutcheson says,—'Jus ensues upon rectum. Jurisprudence is therefore based upon Ethics. For the distinction between rightness,―The Right, -as a quality of action, and a right, as a claim or title of a moral agent, v. Hutcheson, Syst. of Mor. Phil. 11. iii. 1, vol. i. p. 252; Reid, Active Powers, v. iii. H. p. 643; Whewell's Elements of Mor. 1. iv. vol. i. p. 36.

2. As moral obligation requires from me right actions. towards others, it implies rights on their part equivalent to those belonging to myself. Here also the measure of obligation is the measure of rights. The latter cannot be more restricted than the former. The right to fair judgment, the right to generous feeling, and the right to payment of

money due, have all exactly the same ethical validity. The fact that the real acknowledgment of the right is more easily tested in the last-named example than in the other two cases, constitutes no difference in respect of the moral warrant for the claim.

3. Common obligations which determine the forms of right action towards others, mark out the common rights of those who are associated in the same sphere of action.

4. Special obligations resting upon some on account of speciality of relation to others, give to these others special rights in that relation. This discovers the ethical basis of the rights of parents and children, husband and wife, master and servant, for these rights are the exact equivalent of the relative duties. The child has a right to be educated, as the parent is under obligation to provide education for his child.

5. Moral rights are not self-exacted, nor can they be voluntarily surrendered. They are the necessary accompaniment of obligation under reign of moral law. They are as unchangeable as the nature of moral law itself, and the obligation which it imposes.

6. Duties and Rights are moral equivalents resting equally upon the unchangeable warrant of moral law as the universal rule of human action. The ground on which any man can claim a right entitled to acknowledgment by others is exactly the ground on which by necessity he must own moral obligation.

7. All moral rights are perfect rights, irrespective of their being claimed by the person or enforced by society. A moral right rests wholly upon moral law, and must be uniform as that law. (See above, c. v. 5.) Positive law may not attempt to enforce all rights alike, because all rights do not admit of being enforced; but this does not affect the ethical validity of any of the rights of a moral being.

Hutcheson, while holding that 'the observing and fulfilling

every proper right of others is matter of conscience, necessary to obtain the approbation of God and our own hearts,' nevertheless assents to the classification of rights into perfect and imperfect. He says, ' Rights according as they are more or less necessary to be obtained and observed in society, are divided into perfect and imperfect.'-Syst. of Mor. Phil. 11. In the former sentence he speaks as a moralist; in the latter as a jurist.

iii. 3.

Dr. Thomas Brown was more accurate, when he said,— 'There is as little an imperfect right, in a moral sense, as there is in logic an imperfect truth or falsehood.'-Philos. of Mind, Lect. 91.

8. Besides natural moral rights, there are Acquired Moral Rights. These spring up as the direct result of natural rights. Of Acquired Rights, the distinctive rights of each person ac cording to the nature of his property, and the rights acquired by contract, afford examples. The Rights of Property follow directly from the natural right to the use of personal power, and to the fruit of its exercise. The Rights of Contract arise from the natural right to dispose of personal power and property, according to personal choice, restricted only by the moral obligations which are the necessary attendants upon acquired as well as natural rights.

9. Acquired Moral Rights, depending upon natural moral rights, rest ultimately for their authority upon absolute moral law. The measure of any man's rights may depend upon the forms of contract into which he has entered; but the right of contract itself is determined by moral law, and is not dependent on voluntary agreement.

10. PROBLEMS.-(1.) Critically examine the statement,-'Where no covenant hath proceeded, every man has a right to every thing.'-Hobbes, Leviath. 1. 14, also in ch. 13. Molesworth, iii. p. 130, and p. 117. (2.) Does a state of war destroy the natural rights of the combatants? Hobbes says, 'Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.'

Leviath. 1. 13; Molesworth, III. 115.

(3.) How far is it in harmony with moral law to surrender a measure of personal right, in organizing society? (4.) Is there any natural limit to the surrender of personal rights under the requirements of civil government? The problem is,-To find the Ethical grounds for such limitation.

G

DIVISION II.-DEVELOPMENT THEORY.

CHAPTER I.

ORIGIN OF KNOWLEDGE.

1. 'NOTHING is to be held innate that can be shown to arise from experience and education.'-Prof. Bain, Ment. and Moral Science, B. II. c. 6. This is common ground. A development theory of Moral Philosophy is sufficient if it can prove its competence to explain our recognition of moral distinctions, personal obligation, and personal rights.

2. The fundamental position of the development theory is, that all our most complex states of consciousness are merely developments, under natural law, from our simplest state. The mind, as known in present consciousness, is the general resultant of all previous experience. We have it not in our power to ascertain by any direct process, what consciousness told us at the time when its revelations were in their pristine purity. It only offers itself to our inspection as it exists now, when those original revelations are overlaid and buried under a mountainous heap of acquired notions and perceptions.'— Mill's Exam. p. 171. The development theory is, therefore, first a theory of mind, in order to become a theory of morals. Its ethical theory depends on the proved accuracy and sufficiency of its theory of mind. The preliminary stages of the theory are of consequence here only as bearing on a theory of morals.