The next element is liberty.  Obligation implies the faculty of resisting desire, passion, &c., else there would be a contradiction in human nature.  But the truest proof of liberty is to be sought in the constant testimony of consciousness, that, in wishing this or that, I am equally able to will the contrary.  He distinguishes between the power of willing and the power of executing; also between will and desire, or passion.  In the conflict between will and the tyranny of desire lies liberty; and the aim of the conflict is the fulfilment of duty.  For the will is never so free, never so much itself, as when yielding to the law of duty.  Persons are distinguished from Things in having responsibility, dignity, intrinsic value.  Because there is in me a being worthy of respect, I am bound in duty to respect myself, and I have the right to be respected by you.  My duty (he means, of course, what I owe to self) is the exact measure of my right.  The character of being a person is inviolable, is the foundation of property, is inalienable by self or others, and so forth.

He passes to the last element of the phenomenon of morality, the judgement of merit and demerit.  The judgement follows, as the agent is supposed free, and it is not affected by lapse of time.  It depends also essentially on the idea that the agent knows good from evil.  Upon itself follow the notions of reward and punishment.  Merit is the natural right to be rewarded; demerit, paradox as it may appear, is the right to be punished.  A criminal would claim to be punished, if he could comprehend the absolute necessity of expiation; and are there not real cases of such criminals?  But as there can be merit without actual reward, so to be rewarded does not constitute merit.

If good, he continues, is good in itself, and ought to be done without regard to consequences, it is no less true that the consequences of good cannot fail to be happy.  Virtue without happiness and crime without misfortune are a contradiction, a disorder; which are hardly met with in the world, even as it is, or, where in a few cases they are found, are sure to be righted in the end by eternal justice.  The sacrifice supposed in virtue, if generously accepted and courageously undergone, has to be recompensed in respect of the amount of happiness sacrificed.

Once more, he takes up the Sentiment, which is the general echo of all the elements of the phenomenon.  Its end is to make the mind sensible of the bond between virtue and happiness; it is the direct and vivid application of the law of merit.  Again, he touches the states of moral satisfaction and remorse, speaks of our sympathy with the moral goodness of others and our benevolent feeling that arises towards them—­emotions all, but covering up judgments; and this is the end of his detailed analysis of the actual facts of the case.  But he still goes on to sum up in exact expressions the foregoing results, and he claims especially