or others. Duty has fitness for its only aim and end. To
whatever object comes under our control, its fit place, purpose, uses, and
relations are _due_; and our perception of what is thus due constitutes
our _duty_, and awakens in us a sense of obligation. To ourselves, and to
other beings and objects, our fidelity to our relations has in it an
intrinsic fitness; that fitness is _due_ to them and to ourselves; and our
perception of what is thus due constitutes our _duty_, and awakens in us a
sense of obligation.

*Right and wrong are not contingent on the knowledge of the moral agent.*
Unfitness, misuse, abuse, is none the less intrinsically wrong, because it
is the result of ignorance. It is out of harmony with the fitness of
things. It deprives an object of its due use. It perverts to pernicious
results what is salutary in its purpose. It lessens for the agent his
aggregate of good and of happiness, and increases for him his aggregate of
evil and of misery. In this sense--far more significant than that of
arbitrary infliction--the well-known maxim of jurisprudence, "Ignorance of
the law excuses no one,"(2) is a fundamental law of nature.

There is, however, an important distinction between *absolute and relative
right*. In action, the absolute right is conduct in entire conformity with
beings and objects as they are; the relative right is conduct in
accordance with beings and objects as, with the best means of knowledge
within our reach, we believe them to be. The Omniscient Being alone can
have perfect knowledge of all beings and things as they are. This
knowledge is possessed by men in different degrees, corresponding to their
respective measures of intelligence, sagacity, culture, and personal or
traditional experience. In the ruder conditions of society, acts that seem
to us atrociously wrong, often proceed from honest and inevitable
misapprehension, are right in their intention, and are therefore proper
objects of moral approbation. In an advanced condition of intelligence,
and especially under high religious culture, though the realm of things
unknown far exceeds that of things known, there is a sufficiently clear
understanding of the objects and relations of ordinary life to secure men
against sins of ignorance, and to leave in their wrong-doing no semblance
or vestige of right.

The distinction between absolute and relative right enables us to
*reconcile two statements that may have seemed inconsistent* with