obligation; the latter being those in which, though the act is
obligatory, the particular occasions of performing it are left to our
choice; as in the case of charity or beneficence, which we are indeed
bound to practise, but not towards any definite person, nor at any
prescribed time. In the more precise language of philosophic jurists,
duties of perfect obligation are those duties in virtue of which a
correlative right resides in some person or persons; duties of imperfect
obligation are those moral obligations which do not give birth to any
right. I think it will be found that this distinction exactly coincides
with that which exists between justice and the other obligations of
morality. In our survey of the various popular acceptations of justice,
the term appeared generally to involve the idea of a personal right--a
claim on the part of one or more individuals, like that which the law
gives when it confers a proprietary or other legal right. Whether the
injustice consists in depriving a person of a possession, or in breaking
faith with him, or in treating him worse than he deserves, or worse than
other people who have no greater claims, in each case the supposition
implies two things--a wrong done, and some assignable person who is
wronged. Injustice may also be done by treating a person better than
others; but the wrong in this case is to his competitors, who are also
assignable persons. It seems to me that this feature in the case--a
right in some person, correlative to the moral obligation--constitutes
the specific difference between justice, and generosity or beneficence.
Justice implies something which it is not only right to do, and wrong
not to do, but which some individual person can claim from us as his
moral right. No one has a moral right to our generosity or beneficence,
because we are not morally bound to practise those virtues towards any
given individual. And it will be found, with respect to this as with
respect to every correct definition, that the instances which seem to
conflict with it are those which most confirm it. For if a moralist