Page:Philosophical Review Volume 26.djvu/54

42 Development, Progress, and Efficiency—even as most of these terms played their part in the day of the Republic. The conceptions of justice which were current during the nineteenth century reflected the long struggle for liberty and equality. Its fundamental note was individual rights. Due process of law was the agency for their defense. Private property was the fundamental good that needed to be protected by constitutions and courts. The idea was that in the world as planned by God or conducted by Nature every man could secure a fair share of the goods of life if he were not handicapped by privilege or oppressed by governmental power. Now that a new economic power has risen to take the place of the old political agency, and now that competition once relied upon to distribute widely the gains of progress proves a convenient instrument for securing and maintaining monopoly, the old safeguards have crumbled like the older types of fortifications before the modern forty- two centimeter guns. Yet if this were all justice might simply call for new defenses of private interests, for such legislation as the Sherman Act, and such control of monopolies as the Inter-state Commerce Commission. Justice might still mean the guarantee of rights. But there is a change going on which calls for more fundamental reconstruction. The closer interweaving of all our interests, the deepening interdependence of all our lives, the growing power of public opinion and public sentiment, the gradually forming social consciousness, all these lead us to seek somewhat blindly and uncertainly as yet a 'social' justice. Like the old justice, it must protect all members of society—even the least—from violence and fraud, but it seeks to distribute more fairly the burdens and gains; it would keep open the way of opportunity. But above all perhaps is its conviction that society by taking thought can move on to a new level; that no longer living from hand to mouth, no longer groping, or blundering by trial and error, men may through the new science and the new spirit achieve what has been impractical before. Like Plato's ideal this justice must consider individuals not merely as individuals but as members of a social whole which cannot tolerate defect or disharmony. Yet it