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 546 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

maintenance."' " It is the interest of men in a common good, the desire on the part of each, which he thinks of others as sharing, for a good which he conceives to be equally good for them, that transforms mere 'potentia' into what may fitly be called jus, i. e., a power claiming recognition as exercised or capable of being exercised for the common good.""

There is an ambiguity in the word " right," of which the fore- going quotations from Green give evidence. There are three uses of the term, which may be designated, respectively, moral right, popular right, and legal right. That which has been described above as flowing from the belief in moral perfection is moral right. It is right in the "adjective" sense, and is contrasted with wrong. Popular right and legal right, how- ever, have nothing directly to do with right and wrong. They are the "substantive" uses of the term, and denote a social relation based on coercion. Holland defines a right as "one man's capacity of influencing the acts of another, by means, not of his own strength, but of the opinion or the force of society." He designates these respectively as "moral" right and "legal" right, but the term "moral" right is here ill- chosen. "Popular right" is preferable. The distinctions between these three uses of the term will appear clearly if we ask for the standard by which " moral " right is to be measured. When we ask. Is a given deed or social relation right, or is it wrong ? we do not have reference to the standard set up by law or by public opinion. A legal right and a popular right may both be wrong. These are social relations, and may or may not be right. Neither do we refer to the social and legal rights of "normal" as distinguished from "pathological" societies, a criterion proposed by Durkheim.3 Individuals will differ in their opinions as to what is normal and what is patho- logical. Again, the standard cannot be "universal reason," for universal reason, so far as known, revealed, and workable, is only the reason of individual human beings, and these will differ. The standard of moral right must be subjective and

•Green, p. 143. '/hid., p. 54.

^De la division du travail social, p. 34.