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DUTY (from " due," that which is owin...

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Originally appearing in Volume V08, Page 737 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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DUTY (from " due," that which is owing, O. Fr. deu, dil, past participle of devoir;
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Lat. debere, debitum; cf. " debt ")
  , a
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term loosely applied to any
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action or course of action which is regarded as morally incumbent, apart from
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personal likes and dislikes or any
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external compulsion . Such action must be viewed in relation to a principle, which may be abstract in the highest sense (e.g. obedience to the dictates of conscience) or based on
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local and personal relations . That a
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father and his children have mutual duties implies that there are moral
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laws regulating their relation-
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ship; that it is the duty of a servant to obey his master within certain limits is
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part of a definite contract, whereby he becomes a servant engaging to d& certain things for a specified wage . Thus it is held that it is not the duty of a servant to infringe a moral law even though his master should command it . For the nature of duty in the abstract, and the various criteria on which it has been based, see ETHICS . From the root idea of
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obligation to serve or give something in return, involved in the conception of duty, have sprung various derivative uses of the word; thus it is used of the services performed by a minister of a church, by a soldier, or by any employee or servant . A
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special application is to a tax, a payment due to the revenue of a state, levied by force of law . Properly a " duty " differs from a " tax " in being levied on specific commodities, transactions, estates, &c., and not on individuals; thus it is right to talk of import-duties, excise-duties,
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death- or succession-duties, &c., but of income-tax as being levied on a person in proportion to his income . DU VAIR, GUILLAUME (1556—1621), French author and lawyer, was born in Paris on the 7th of March 1 556 . Du Vair was in orders, and, though during the greater part of his
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life he exercised only legal functions, he was from 1617 till his death bishop of
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Lisieux . His reputation, however, is that of a lawyer, a statesman and a man of letters . He became in 1584 counsellor of the parlement of Paris, and as deputy for Paris to the Estates of the
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League he pronounced his most famouspolitico-legal discourse, an
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argument nominally for the Salic law, but in reality directed against the alienation of the
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crown of France to the
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Spanish infanta, which was advocated by the extreme Leaguers .

Henry IV . a tknowledged his services by entrusting him with a special commission as magistrate at
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Marseilles, and made him master of requests . In 1595 appeared his
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treatise De l'eloquence francaise et
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des raisons pour quoi elle est demeuree si basse, in which he criticizes the orators of his day, adding by way of example some
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translations of the speeches of ancient orators, which reproduce the spirit rather than the actual words of the originals . He was sent to England in 1596 with the marshal de
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Bouillon to negotiate a league against Spain; in 1599 he became first president of the parlement of Province (
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Aix); and in 1603 was appointed to the see of Marseilles, which he soon resigned in order to resume the
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presidency . In 1616 he received the highest promotion open to a French lawyer and became keeper of the
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seals . He died at Tonneins (Lot-et-Garonne) on the 3rd of August 1621 . Both as
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speaker and writer he holds a very high rank, and his character was equal to his abilities . Like other
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political lawyers of the time, Du Vair busied himself not a little in the study of philosophy . The most celebrated of his
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treatises are La Philosophie morale des Stoiques, translated into
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English (1664) by Charles Cotton; De la constance et consolation es calamites publiques,' which was composed during the siege of Paris in 1589, and applied the Stoic
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doctrine to
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present misfortunes; and La Sainte Philosophic, in which religion and philosophy are intimately connected .
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Pierre Charron drew freely on these and other
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works of Du Vair . F. de Brunetiere points out the analogy of Du Vair's position with that afterwards
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developed by Pascal, and
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sees in him the ancestor of the Jansenists . Du Vair had a
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great indirect influence on the development of style in French, for in the south of France he made the acquaintance of Malherbe, who conceived a great admiration for Du Vair's writings .

The reformer of French

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poetry learned much from the treatise De l'eloquence francaise, to which the counsels of his friend were no doubt added . Du Vair's works were published in folio at Paris in 1641 . See Niceron, Memoires, vol . 43; and monographs by C . A . Sapey (1847 and 1858) .

End of Article: DUTY (from " due," that which is owing, O. Fr. deu, dil, past participle of devoir; Lat. debere, debitum; cf. " debt ")
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MICHAEL MADHU SUDAN DUTT (1824—1873)
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