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CONCEPTION OF VIRTUE & VICE.
An objection
moral obligation, may seem to have no worth in their eyes !
The criticism, in reply, we say, is beside the mark ; for the proposition is applicable to every thing except moksha itself in relation to refuted. which we judge everything else and which is regarded as the fountain of all worth. This moksha or the state of liberation, as we have discussed before, is not something'alien to our nature, but is on the other hand the fullest development of the capabilities now lying veiled or dormant in us, and all the worth it possesses for us, is due to its being the full. est realisation of our own true and characteristic nature. And all the feelings, emotions and'affections which gather round the apprehension of virtue and vice, which accompany the sense of duty or conviction of obligation, and the consciousness of good or ill desert, remorse and self-approval, moral hopes and fears,--all testify unanimously to his being in the state of bondage, the liberation from which is therefore the true goal of every moral progress. For whence comes the permanent uneasiness and discontent that are apt to haunt even the favoured lives ? Undoubted
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