It may be said, however, that there is another implication in the term “duty” which I have so far overlooked, but which its derivation--and that of the equivalent term ‘obligation’--plainly indicates: viz. that it is “due” or owed to some one. But I think that here the derivation does not govern the established usage: rather, it is commonly recognised that duties owed _to_ persons, or “relative” duties, are only one species, and that some duties--as (_e.g._) Truth-speaking--have no such relativity. No doubt it is possible to view any duty as relative to the person or persons immediately affected by its performance; but it is not usual to do this where the immediate effects are harmful--as where truth-speaking causes a physically injurious shock to the person addressed--: and though it may still be conceived to be ultimately good for society, and so “due” to the community or to humanity at large, that truth should even in this case be spoken, this conception hardly belongs to the intuitional view that ‘truth should be spoken regardless of consequences.’ Again, it may be thought by religious persons that the performance of duties is owed not to the human or other living beings affected by them, but to God as the author of the moral law. And I certainly would not deny that our common conception of duty involves an implied relation of an individual will to a universal will conceived as perfectly rational: but I am not prepared to affirm that this implication is necessary, and an adequate discussion of the difficulties involved in it would lead to metaphysical controversies which I am desirous of avoiding. I propose, therefore, in this exposition of the Intuitional method, to abstract from this relation of Duty generally to a Divine Will: and, for reasons partly similar, to leave out of consideration the particular “duties to God” which Intuitionists have often distinguished and classified. Our view of the general rules of “duty to man” (or to other animals)--so far as such rules are held to be cognisable by moral intuition--will, I conceive, remain the same, whether or not we regard such rules as imposed by a Supreme Rational Will: since in any case they will be such as we hold it rational for all men to obey, and therefore such as a Supreme Reason would impose. I shall not therefore treat the term “Duty” as implying necessarily a relation either to a universal Imponent or to the individuals primarily affected by the performance of duties: but shall use it as equivalent generally to Right conduct, while practically concentrating attention on acts and abstinences for which a moral impulse is thought to be more or less required.