Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/100

84 authority" (p. 150) because it records the process followed in the maintenance and evolution of life, it must be replied that even if this circumstance invested it with "authority," — as it does not, — natural selection, when it reaches the plane of rational life, is subordinated to the higher principle of human sympathy and sociality, which is the taproot alike of morality and of the organized community in which it is realized. Ethics, accordingly, carries us into a sphere — not merely of living, but of living well — in which the biological formula is without application.

This leads to the second point. I cannot agree with Mr. Spencer that natural selection furnishes us with the content, or "positive element," of the idea of Justice. In a universe with only one person in it, there could be no justice, even though he should receive all the consequences, good and evil, of his own nature, just as a solitary animal does. Justice implies a relation between one person and others, or at least one other, and consists of fair play, impartiality, proportionate distribution of burdens and benefits. In a universe, therefore, in which no one received all the consequences of his own nature there might nevertheless be a perfect realization of justice. Justice does not prescribe what goods or ills the citizens shall receive, but simply that these shall be distributed in a certain way among the recipients, not perhaps equally, but at least in a manner exclusive of arbitrary inequality.

But, it may be objected, when this principle of distribution is particularized, is it not identical with that for which Mr. Spencer contends? Will not each one's just share be the sum of benefits and evils that result from his nature and conduct? Now in spite of superficial likeness, there is a radical difference between Mr. Spencer's doctrine and the view of Justice held by the generality of mankind. The common view is that the principle of distributive Justice requires, in the absence of interventions due to contract or custom, that persons should be treated according to their deserts. And desert implies the free choice of good or evil the power of doing otherwise at the moment of acting. In practice it is impossible for us to distinguish what is due to free choice and what comes from natural endowment and favoring circumstances. We must content ourselves, therefore, with making similar awards for similar services. But our ideal of Justice is conceived as realized in Providence, who reads the hearts of men and makes a due requital of their good and ill deserts. Now whoever denies the power of free choice dissipates the common notion of desert, and undermines the foundation of Justice as ordinarily understood. This is the case with Mr. Spencer who holds that moral, like physical or intellectual, defects "are all primarily inherited" (p. 42). He must, accordingly, reconstruct Justice on some other principle. In terms he not infrequently appropriates the philosophy of