Today, many of us feel strongly about duty, but it is more likely to be in the context of a specific situation, perhaps in relation to the needs of family or work. To the Victorians, it was almost an entity in itself. Yet it was essentially humanistic: it needed no God to guarantee it but emerged from our own moral nature. It was a human-centered wish to do the right thing, not just by each other, but by our own lives—our own humanity.
