What is the sense of duty?
We too seldom ask ourselves this question.

Is it not a feeling of obligation, of being in debt, to some person, or persons, or institution, or society, or even to some invisible Power;--to a friend, for example, a relative, a dependent, an employer, a "contracting party," a commanding officer,--or, again, to one's trade or profession, to one's political party, to one's church, to one's country,--or, in the last resort, to God?
And is not this feeling accompanied by the secret conviction that until the debt has been liquidated, to the best of the debtor's ability, justice will not have been done?
The sense of duty is, I think, a derivative sense, an offshoot from the more primitive sense of justice,--a sense so primitive that it may almost be said to have made possible our social life.

If this is so, if the sense of duty is resolvable into the sense of justice, then the training which is given in Utopia--a training which makes for healthy and harmonious growth, and therefore (as we have seen) for outgrowth or escape from self--is the best preparation for a life of duty, that can possibly be given.

For under its influence the sense of justice, which is essentially a social instinct, knowing no distinction between oneself and one's neighbour, will be relieved of the hostile pressure of its arch-enemy, the anti-social instinct of selfishness,[21] and will therefore make rapid and vigorous growth.

The sense of justice is, as might be expected, strongly developed in the selfless atmosphere of Utopia, where indeed it has helped, in no small degree, to evolve the wonderful social life of the school; and, that being so, there is no fear but what the Utopian will be sustained by the sense of duty when the time comes for him to work against the grain of his nature.