Green on legal obligations versus moral duties

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"And it is important to understand that while the enforcement of obligations is possible, that of moral duties is impossible. But the establishment of obligations by law or authoritative custom, and the gradual recognition of moral duties, have not been separate processes. They have gone together in the history of man. The growth of the institutions by which more complete equality of rights as gradually secured to a wider range of persons, and of those interests in various forms of social well-being by which the will is moralised, have been related to each other as the outer and the inner side of the same spiritual development..." -- Principles of Political Obligation, p. 192



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