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59 u chapter 7 u On Duty to Oneself 1 It is not a superfluous obligation for a man to take care of himself with regard for the law and for the superior who has made the law. We have discussed the grounds on which a man is obliged by the law to look after himself at p. 53. [I.5.1.i] Pufendorf passes too lightly over the cultivation of the mind, a subject which has an important place among the duties which natural law prescribes . This seems to be virtually the only thing which some recent writers understand by ethics when they opt to distinguish ethics from natural jurisprudence . In various editions of this treatise several commentators have corrected this defect from the author himself by placing the material from Of the Law of Nature and Nations, II.IV, in their text or in footnotes or appendices. We decided to insert the following supplement here, which is largely excerpted from that source,2 as we indicated in the preface. [I.5.2.i] On the duties of a man toward his own mind3 The cultivation of the mind consists particularly in these things: to fill it with sound opinions in matters relating to duties; to learn how to judge rightly 1. From the notes to bk. I, ch. 5, “On the Duty of Man toward Himself”; and Supplement III. 2. Carmichael’s account of the duties of a man toward his own mind is an adaptation of Pufendorf’s treatment in Of the Law of Nature and Nations, II.IV, pp. 151– 80, which ignores Pufendorf’s many classical allusions and recasts the discussion in accordance with Carmichael’s moral psychology. His discussion is also indebted to Locke’s Essay, as he acknowledges below, p. 67. 3. Supplement III. 60 natural rights of the objects which commonly stimulate human desire; to be accustomed to command the passions by the norm of reason; and to be duly instructed in some honest skill appropriate to one’s conditions and manner of life. 1. Among the opinions or beliefs with which the mind must be filled, the most important is a sure and firm conviction of the topics surveyed in Of the Law of Nature and Nations, II.IV, on God as the Creator, Preserver and Governor of this Universe. This conviction not only implies a specific human duty (which that chapter impresses upon us), but is also the foundation of a kind of joyful peace, which pervades the human mind; it is also the mainstay of the practice of all integrity toward other men. Hence a right conviction about the existence and providence of the Deity is a duty, in different respects, toward God, toward ourselves, and toward other men. 2. After the knowledge of God, it is of the greatest possible value to every man that he properly know himself, as he relates to God and to other men. In the former respect, each man should know that he was created by God, and depends wholly on his effective providence; and he is thus held by a most sacred bond to worship him, and to conduct himself with God in view in all things, however contrary this may be to his own or other men’s desires. He ought also to know that he has been endowed by his Creator with a rational faculty, whose right use requires that he should not be carried along by blind impulse, like an animal; but should set before himself an end worthy of his nature, and should use means fitly chosen for its achievement; and thus not wander through this world but proceed purposefully , which is the prerogative of a wise man. With respect to other men, each man should recognize that, however great he seems to himself, he is but a small part of the human race; in which every other man naturally plays an equal part: and therefore, since sound reason teaches us to make similar judgments about similar things, he must permit to others in similar circumstances everything that he claims for himself; and should no more prefer his private convenience to the common good of the human race, than he would privilege the comfort of his smallest limb over the health of his whole body. 3. Next, what is relevant to a man’s due knowledge of himself is that he should have taken the measure of his own strength and the effect which his individual...

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