Читать книгу Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation. Reprinted from Green's Philosophical Works, vol. II., with Preface by Bernard Bosanquet онлайн

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10. The 'jus naturae,' thus understood, is at once distinguished from the sphere of moral duty, and relative to it. It is distinguished from it because admitting of enforcement by law. Moral duties do not admit of being so enforced. The question sometimes put, whether moral duties should be enforced by law, is really an unmeaning one; for they simply cannot be enforced. They are duties to act, it is true, and an act can be enforced: but they are duties to act from certain dispositions and with certain motives, and these cannot be enforced. Nay, the enforcement of an outward act, the moral character of which depends on a certain motive and disposition, may often contribute to render that motive and disposition impossible: and from this fact arises a limitation to the proper province of law in enforcing acts, which will have to be further considered below. When obligations then are spoken of in this connection, as part of the 'jus naturae' correlative to rights, they must always be understood not as moral duties, not as relative to states of will, but as relative to outward acts, of which the performance or omission can and should be enforced. There is a moral duty to discharge such obligations, and to do so in a certain spirit, but the obligation is such as that with which law has to do or may have to do, is relative to an outward act merely, and does not amount to a moral duty. There is a moral duty in regard to obligations, but there can be no obligation in regard to moral duties. Thus the 'jus naturae'—the system of rights and obligations, as it should become no less than as it actually is maintained—is distinct from morality in the proper sense. But it is relative to it. This is implied in saying that there is a moral duty in regard to actual obligations, as well as in speaking of the system of rights and obligations as it should become. If such language is justifiable, there must be a moral ground both for conforming to, and for seeking to develope and improve, established 'Recht'; a moral ground which can only lie in the moral end served by that established system.