Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/570

552 fellow. These latter are partly direct and partly indirect or secondary relations.

The direct relationships in this case are those of a man to the concrete person of his human fellow. These direct relationships are simple and not very numerous, in fact, although they assume countless variations of circumstance and form. Some of them are special, like the relations that exist between parent and child and between husband and wife; some of them are limited, like the relations that exist between the sexes; and some of them are common and universal. In the conduct which is incident to these relationships there has seemed to be a great variety of distinguishable qualities of the absolute sort, and we have a lengthy catalogue of names in the nomenclature of morals to represent them; but I am disposed to believe that, after all, there are only two radical qualities (with their opposites) to be found in this sphere of human conduct. These are benevolence and justice. All the rest, which appear upon the surface as distinguishable moral qualities, I conclude to be either variations of these in degree and by circumstance, or else the resultant of some blending of them with the moral qualities of the other order. Such blending is necessarily incessant, because the relationships under which man is acting are always mixed. Mr. Lecky has given the name of the "amiable virtues" to a considerable group of these moral qualities, such as charity, generosity, magnanimity, mercifulness or clemency, kindness, and so on, every one of which would seem to have its root in benevolence, or in benevolence and justice combined, and to be merely circumstantial modifications of the same essential quality. Then we have, appertaining to this relationship, such qualities as fidelity and honor—if the two are really distinguishable—and both of these are clearly produced by an intermixture of the absolute personal quality of truthfulness with the absolute social quality of justice. Whatever else there may be of distinguishable moral qualities appearing to be incident to the direct relations of human fellowship, I am sure that they will be found reducible to the two radicals of benevolence and justice, or to their combination with those other radicals—courage and truthfulness—which we found to have an intrinsic source in the constitution of man, as qualitative factors in human conduct.

The indirect or secondary relations that exist between man and man as human fellows are those which extend to something additional to the person—to things, that is, which have become recognizably identified with the person. In these relationships the whole notion of "property" is involved. The idea of "property" is the idea of a special relation existing between a certain man and certain things, in recognizing which we necessarily recognize—1. That our own relations to those things are modified by it; and, 2. That it introduces a new set of relations between ourselves and the man, which are indirect, because the things in question are intermediate in them. Not only