Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/600

 578 GREAT BRITAIN- AND AMERICA. shows the application of moral judgments to all actions which affect individual welfare. The very fact that some deviations from normal life are now morally disapproved, implies the existence of both egoistic and altruistic sanctions for the moral approval of all acts which conduce to normal living and the disapproval of all minor deviations, though for the most part these have hitherto remained unconsidered. Doubtless, however, moral control must here be somewhat indefinite ; and even scientific observation and analysis must leave the production of a perfectly regulated conduct to " the organic adjustment of constitution to [social] con- ditions." The Ethics of Social Life includes justice and beneficence. Human justice emerges from sub-human or animal justice, whose law (passing over gratis benefits to offspring) is its own nature and its consequent conduct." This is the law of human justice, also, but here it is more limited than before by the non-interference which gregariousness requires, and by the increasing need for the sacrifice of individuals for the good of the species. The egoistic sentiment of jus- tice arises from resistance to interference with free action ; the altruistic develops through sympathy under social con- ditions, these being maintained meanwhile by a " pro- altruistic " sentiment, into which dread of retaliation, of social reprobation, of legal punishment, and of divine venge- ance enter as component parts. The idea of justice emerges gradually from the sentiment of justice : it has two elements, one brute or positive, with inequality as its ideal, one human or negative, the ideal of which is equality. In early times the former of these was unduly appreciated, as in later times the latter ; the true conception includes both, the idea of equality being applied to the limits and the idea of inequality to the benefits of action. Thus the formula of justice becomes : " Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man " — a law which finds its authority in the facts, that it is an a priori dictum of " consciousness after it has been subject to the discipline of prolonged social life," and that it is also deducible from the conditions of the main-
 * that each individual shall receive the benefits and evils of