Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/279

 CRITERION OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE 265

alleged injustice involved in the extremes of wealth and poverty which it permits to exist, while it is defended by some with equal warmth of conviction as the very flower of that which is fair and just. Most of these discussions lead to no result simply because the disputants have never taken the trouble to clearly define, even in their own minds, the words they so glibly employ. If examined on this point common sense is quite certain it knows precisely what it is talking about. But the considerable number of mutually exclusive formulae that have been proposed, the vagueness of a large proportion, and the palpable absurdity of some show that the conception is a complex one, whose real nature can be brought out only in a careful and extended analysis.

As a matter of fact it is no easy undertaking to even enumer- ate the phenomena to be included under the term justice. For generations this has been used so loosely that it has now become impossible to frame a comprehensive statement of the various forms of morality to which the name is actually applied. It may, however, be defined as such a distribution among two or more parties of things considered desirable or undesirable as would be sanctioned by the moral consciousness. "The things distributed" may be material or otherwise, money or its equiva- lents, honors, preferment or affection, or, on the other hand, pain, fines, etc. A number of objections will doubtless suggest themselves to this definition, many of which could easily be shown to be more apparent than real, but they do not require an elaborate discussion in this place, for the definition given is at all events sufficiently exact for the purposes of this paper. The far more important question is that with regard to the standard of distribution. Nothing better exhibits the vagueness of popular notions on this subject than the verbal jugglery with which common sense has here allowed itself to be imposed upon. A famous formula reads: "Justice is the firm and constant purpose to give every man his own." If this statement merely means to call attention to the fact that justice is concerned with distribu- tion, it is well enough, but as a criterion it is worse than useless.