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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17. Does this general rule give any real guidance in the difficulties which practically arise in regard to the province of law—as to what should be required by law, and what left to the inclination of individuals? What cases are there or have there been of enactments which on this principle we can pronounce wrong? Have attempts ever been made by law to enforce acts as virtuous which lose their virtue when done under fear of legal penalties? It would be difficult, no doubt, to find instances of attempts to enforce by law actions of which we should say that the value lies in the disposition from which they are done, actions, e.g. of disinterested kindness, because the clear conception of virtue as depending not on outward results, but on disposition, is but slowly arrived at, and has never been reflected in law. But without any strictly moral object at all, laws have been made which check the development of the moral disposition. This has been done (a) by legal requirements of religious observance and profession of belief, which have tended to vitiate the religious source of morality; (b) by prohibitions and restraints, unnecessary, or which have ceased to be necessary, for maintaining the social conditions of the moral life, and which interfere with the growth of self-reliance, with the formation of a manly conscience and sense of moral dignity,—in short, with the moral autonomy which is the condition of the highest goodness; (c) by legal institutions which take away the occasion for the exercise of certain moral virtues (e.g. the Poor-law which takes away the occasion for the exercise of parental forethought, filial reverence, and neighbourly kindness).