there to our heart's
content, is our own concern, and nobody else's. No doubt, in doing this
we should be doing very wrong, but still there is no contradiction in
saying that we should have perfect right to do it, inasmuch as we should
thereby be wronging no one but ourselves. Of another class of
virtues--of all those which admit of being directly contrasted with
justice, and which may for shortness' sake be without much inaccuracy
comprehended under the general designation of generosity--it may, with
literal truth, be said that the practice of them is no part of our duty
to our neighbour. Provided we are careful to let every one have what,
between him and us, are his bare dues, we may be selfish, mean, sordid
to excess, without infringing any one else's rights, without the
smallest dereliction of our duty to others. True, ethical writers are in
the habit of speaking of 'duties of perfect and imperfect obligation,'
but of these 'ill-chosen expressions,' as Mr. Mill,[14] with abundant
reason, styles them, the latter, more particularly, is of a slovenliness
which ought to have prevented its being used by any 'philosophic
jurists.' What some of these mean by it is stated to be 'duties in
which, though the act is obligatory, the particular occasions of
performing it are left to our choice; as in the case of charity or
beneficence, which we are indeed bound to practise, but not towards any
defined person, or at any prescribed time.' But, according to this
explanation, there are duties of which performance may not only be
indefinitely postponed, even until a morrow that may never come, but of
which performance at one time will warrant non-performance of them
subsequently; so that, for instance, he who has behaved charitably on
past occasions, may be uncharitable afterwards. 'In the more precise
language' of other writers, we are told that while 'duties of perfect
obligation are those duties in virtue of which a correlative right
resides in some person or persons, duties of imperfect obligation are
those which do not give birth to any right.' But, as where there is no
right nothing can be due, it would seem from this that by duties of
imperfect obligation are to be understood duties performance of which is
not due. I hope to be pardoned for declining to accept these illusive
distinctions as the boundaries which separate justice from the other
components of morality. I neither understand how any obligation can be
otherwise than