ral sense or faculty, what I
understand by that is not recognition of certain rights or duties as
such, but recognition of the obligation to respect whatever rights
and to fulfil whatever duties are recognised, according to which
definition it is mere tautology to add that the sense or faculty in
question originates simultaneously with the recognition of any rights
or duties. For inasmuch as rights invariably imply corresponding
obligations--inasmuch as if a thing be rightfully claimed, that same
thing must needs be due or owing, it is of course impossible to perceive
that a thing is _owing_ without perceiving at the same moment that it
_ought_ to be paid. On this account, and with this explanation, I should
not scruple to speak of the moral sense as intuitive; but if for that
reason I am to be called an Intuitionist, so equally must Mr. Mill, for
he has said precisely the same thing. He likewise has said that 'the
moral faculty, if not a part of our nature, is a natural out-growth from
it, capable, in a certain small degree, of springing up spontaneously.'

II.

By my avowal of a belief in 'Natural Rights,' I feel that I must have
incurred in philosophic quarters a sort of civil contempt, which I am
very desirous of removing, and which will, I trust, be somewhat
diminished on my proceeding to explain how few and elementary are the
rights that I propose for naturalisation. They are but two in number,
and they are these:--(1) Absolute right, except in so far as the same
may have been forfeited by misconduct or modified by consent, to deal in
any way one pleases, not noxious to other people, with one's own self or
person; (2) right equally absolute to dispose similarly of the produce
either of one's own honest industry, or of that of others whose rights
in connection with it have been honestly acquired by oneself. I call
these 'rights,' because there cannot possibly anywhere exist either the
right to prevent their being exercised, or any rights with which they
can clash, and because, therefore, by their freest exercise, no one can
possibly be wronged, while to interfere with their exercise would be to
wrong their possessor. And I call them 'natural,' because they are not
artificially created, and have no need of external ratification. Whoever
thinks proper to deny this--whoever, as all Utilitarians do, contends
that society is entitled to interfere with the rights which I have
called natural, is bound to attempt to sho