Once in a drawing-room, during a game of definitions, I heard a light-hearted young lady define Duty in the following terms: "Duty is that which we do unwillingly." A stern professor contradicted her at once with the solemnity he thought due to his position, and assured her reprovingly: "It is my duty to give lectures, and I do this duty gladly. If you were right, madam, expressions such as 'zealous in one's duty' and 'willing performance of duty' would have no meaning and could never have been coined." That seems convincing, but yet it is wrong. Expressions such as "zealous in one's duty" and "willing performance of duty" were not coined until society had developed its system of Morality and had educated its members to strive for its approval by conducting themselves in accordance with this system, to look on its approval as a flattering distinction and to fear its disapproval as a disgrace. Such phrases are Pharisaical, calculated to exercise a suggestive influence profitable to society. They are the sugar to sweeten the pill; but the young lady was honest and the professor conventional; the pill is bitter. Thinkers recognized and admitted this thousands of years ago. Antiphon, the sophist, says: "The law, the outcome of an agreement, coerces nature, the result of growth, and goes against the interest of the individual." The same idea is expressed by the tragic poet in the lines: "The gods have placed sweat before virtue." This was said in the very same words by Lao Tse, the disciple of Meng Tse, the pupil of Confucius and the reformer of his doctrine.
The law, not only the law of the state which Antiphon has principally in view, but also the moral law, "goes against the interest of the individual"; not in reality, but apparently, at the first superficial glance. Moral conduct is the reverse of natural conduct; it takes place in opposition to instinct by deflecting the original impulse; it is a subjugation of inclination, a victory over the real nature of the man. Virtue has to exert its utmost strength in bitter struggles, fought out within the individual, before it can reveal itself actively in deeds. That is a natural consequence of the manner in which Morality originated.