Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/235

 THE RANDALL FAMILY 22/

itself is the highest possible law, and in all places and all. times the absolutely sovereign interest of every moral being, — then it is clear enough that, when we complain of "fanatics for justice," we are complaining of ethics itself. What else can an ethical religion aim at than just to make "a fanatic for justice" out of every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth ? The cynical contempt for the essence of all ethics which is conveyed in that strange expression, "fanatic for justice," simply betrays in the utterer's mind that melancholy breakdown of the ethical idea itself which must inevitably, both in the in- dividual and in society, follow denial or disregard of all intellectual reasons for it. What, on the whole, must hap- pen, whenever men at large begin to ask for some rational ground for the Moral Law, and yet ask in vain ? Can it be anything else than a general falling-back on self-interest, on convention, on passion, on pleasure, on anything rather than a reasonless and forceless law ? Nevertheless, the welfare of the world hangs on knowledge of and obedi- ence to that "Law of the Whole" which is at bottom a "Just Law;" and, when a so-called "ethical culture movement" slights the "fanatic for justice," it writes itself down a sham, because in him it disregards that very "Sovereignty of Ethics" on which it professes to build. Randall is worth to the world a hundred "ethical culture movements," just because he was a "fanatic for justice" — just because he put justice on the throne of the uni- verse. If any man doubts this, let him read the " Ode to Conscience."

In truth, despite all semblance to the contrary, Randall himself anticipates the demand of the next century for a rational foundation of the Moral Law, a knowable and known reason for it, as the necessary condition of its

�� �