Thus the approving or disapproving judgment of the justice of human actions or institutions always rests on the same psychological processes. But the results to which it comes may be very different. How would it otherwise be possible that the conceptions of justice of barbarians, of heathens, of Christians, of men of modern culture, differ so much that something different is always demanded under the plea of justice? Even within the same nation and the same period the controversy as to what constitutes justice will never cease; but from time to time certain judgments will succeed in placing themselves in the dominating centre of the progressive movement, certain results of former intellectual contests will descend to posterity as a secured inheritance; and as long as the night of barbarism does not break in again they will rule and influence it more and more.
If we now try to explain somewhat more fully the psychological processes in question, the first step always seems to be to group in our conceptions a number of men into bodies of moral community. These bodies are then compared and tested according to their qualities and actions. The equalities are searched for and found by the judgment, the inequalities and their degrees are tried by the estimating and valuing sense. It is in the realm of the feelings in which all the final decisions on this most important point are reached. All feelings finally resolve themselves into an adjudging or disparaging, into an estimation and a sensation of that which furthers and that which impedes us; they are decisions on the worth of men and things. And upon this now follows finally the simple logical conclusion: the persons whom I am to conceive as a moral community must, as far as human intervention reaches, be treated equally in the measure of their equality, unequally in the measure of their inequality.
The groups of persons into which our conceptions necessarily classify mankind are manifold. The members of the family and the tribe, the bellows of a society and a community, the citizens of a State and of a federation, the members of a church and of a race, finally all humanity in a certain sense can be so grouped, but only in so far as they form a moral community and pursue certain common ends. Whosoever stands without the group is foreign to the comparison, is not comprised in the judgment of what is just. Hence a barbarian does not think it unjust to kill the stranger; only the conception of a moral community between all nations and all men prevents this. Likewise it does not seem to me unjust that an Englishman pays double the taxes paid by a German of equal income. With the variety of different human purposes and communities the same man appears at one time like his fellows, at another unlike. In a club of any kind which claims but a small fraction of our interest, we see no injustice in a per capita assessment which we would consider unbearable in a State or community. It accords with our idea of justice that all young and vigorous men have an equal duty in the defence of our country, whereas for other public and social purposes they show the greatest dissimilarities, and are accordingly treated differently.
The judgment of equality or inequality is, therefore, always a very complicated one. Not only must the human qualities and deeds be considered per se, but also in their relations to the aims of human society. In one grouping and classification we have in view only some one certain well-defined quality of mankind; in another we attempt a weighing of all qualities, we seek the average human being. A shipwrecked party, which has saved itself in a boat too small to carry all, will be apt to value all their companions equally in the question of life and death, and cast lots equally for all. But the provisions which have been saved will be distributed according to the various needs, i.e., the seaman at the oar will be given twice as much as the three-year-old child. In a tribe of warlike nomads the bravest fighter, in the jockey club the best rider, is fairly given a preference which would appear unjust in other groups of men. Even in the family and in the State a certain kind only of qualities or actions often forms the basis of judgment. The judge on the bench cares only for certain wrongful acts; the father who wishes to bequeath the same to each child, because he thinks this just, will not deny their dissimilarity in many respects. The State, however, will distribute honors and dignities in the nearest possible relation to the average of qualities most important to it. Every election, every promotion is governed by an average of composite impressions. The judgment upon a just or unjust distribution of wealth and income will always rest on a similar basis.
Whether it be a single quality or action, or a sum of them, those which are considered are such as relate to the aims and ends of the community. And they may naturally be of the greatest variety, may include, for instance, even physical strength or beauty. In an athletic club it seems just to give a prize to the strongest man, in tableaux vivants to favor a beautiful woman. As a rule, however, in social bodies of a higher order those qualities are to be considered which, like virtue and talent, are of the greatest service to them, which manifest themselves in actions advantageous to the community. Often there are very heterogeneous qualities to be compared, as the aims of the great moral communities, especially of the State, are the most various. The question can arise, is the brave general or the great statesman, the great painter or the great singer, of greater Universal value? The decision is given by public sentiment according to that classification of purposes which appears at the moment to be the correct one, and following it we find a verdict of the public which declares the salary of a general, of a secretary of state or of a singer to be just or unjust.
Quite as difficult as the comparison of different qualities or acts is the valuation of the inequalities in the same sphere of human action. That the statesman deserves a higher salary than his secretary, that the head of a great firm earns more than his cashier, and the latter more than the youngest clerk, that the designer in a factory is more important than the porter -- in all this, public sentiment and valuation agree. But when the grades of inequality are to be measured and to be expressed in figures, which is indispensable in all the practical questions, there will be many differences of opinion; and from this point of view indeed the opinion might be upheld that the psychological judgments which form the foundations of the conceptions of the just are always a chaos without unity and clearness. The objection which we so often meet on the field of aesthetic judgment seems obvious, that there is no general judgment, that all is a matter of individual taste, that mere individual processes of feeling are in question, which are immeasurably entangled, and which a fool alone could regard as a basis of public affairs and institutions.
This would in fact be true, if the individual thoughts and sentiments of men were, indeed, only the product of independent and isolated individuals. But every disposition of mind, every word, every idea, every conception, more profoundly examined, is the result not of an individual, but of a social process. The greatest genius even thinks and feels as a member of the community; ninety per cent of what he possesses is a trust conveyed to him by forefathers, teachers, fellow-creatures, to be cherished and bequeathed to posterity. The majority of everyday persons are little more than indifferent vessels into which flow the feelings and thoughts of preceding and contemporary millions. Language is a product of society. By means of the spoken word, Herbart says, thought and feeling pass over into the mind of another. There they originate new fillings and thoughts, which forthwith cross the same bridge, to enrich the ideas of the first. Thus it happens that the smallest part of our thoughts originates in ourselves, and that we draw, as it were, from a public storehouse, and participate in a universal generation of thoughts to which each individual makes only a comparatively scanty contribution.
Supposing for the moment that the feelings on which the estimating judgments of what is just are founded, remain wholly in the obscure realm of mental temperaments, even in this stage they are not a psychological chaos, but a rhythmic movement of masses. And the more they rise to judgments and standards of valuation, the more the mental temperaments are condensed through the medium of public discussion, to decisions which possess distinct characteristics and criteria, the more we have before us mass-judgments which are not quite uniform, it is true, but still classed according to masses, grouped according to centres and authorities, and which are clear, firm and generally admitted. On account of the same qualities, in regard to the same purposes, they give the same results again and again and become the ruling standards of valuation.
Every period has prevailing conventional standards of valuation for human qualities and deeds, virtues and vices; it conventionally values this kind of action more highly than that, and so demands accordingly in one case greater rewards or greater honors, in another severer punishments or smaller incomes. These conventional standards of valuation are more or less the starting-point of every judgment of justice. A new and changed conception is measured in the first instance by its deviation from the traditions. As every fixation of price in society is not anew the result of demand and supply, but as demand and supply only try to modify traditional values, so it is also with the valuing judgments of justice or injustice. The sum of that which has been handed down as just, invariably forms the real basis of all judgments. A refined intuition of right demands a change here and there; in opposition to the sum total of conceptions of the just, this is only a single, but an important point.
In existing customs and in existing law, these conventional and traditional standards of valuation have their real bulwark; thus they have assumed a form which firmly, rigidly and uniformly governs wide circles of mankind, and in that well-defined form they are handed down from generation to generation. But they also can be found outside of this solid ground; they originate everywhere from repetitions of similar cases and form the basis of judgments of what is just. These judgments, indeed, arise daily and hourly in the mind of every thoughtful man in regard to all social relations of life; they are not confined to actual law. In family life the sister thinks it unjust that the brother is favored; in every social circle, visits, invitations, even smiles, looks and compliments are resented as unjust preferences. The mental processes are the same whether here or on the ground of actual law. Everywhere it is in the main traditional standards which govern our judgment. These traditional and conventional standards are the historical precipitate of the conception of justice of hundreds of millions of men, on whose shoulders we stand. Through these traditions the seemingly irregular, the casual and individual takes firm body and lasting form in spite of constant transformations and renewals.
From this standpoint we can easily refute the naive objection that there is no way to apply the conception of the just to economic matters, because, it is said, incomparable quantities and qualities are in question, the different kinds of work, the functions of the employer and the day-laborer being immeasurable by any common standard. They forget that the formation of prices in the market equalizes that which is seemingly incomparable, as, for instance, an edition of Goethe and a bottle of champagne; that in every penal code two things which appear to be still more heterogeneous, a fine of so and so much money and a day's imprisonment are in a fixed ratio according to a conventional standard. Everywhere in the questions of prices and of law the traditional and conventional judgment, that this is to be called equal and not that, is fundamental. Only should we have to begin every moment to form our judgments anew would this objection be reasonable. As things are, the fact remains that the average earnings of the employer; compared to the wages of the laborer, can be raised or lowered by a change in demand and supply within such an economic organization as exists to-day; that independently thereof, in consequence of traditional standards on the one hand and of the modern sentiments and ideals on the other, this change, as soon as it has reached a certain extent, will appear just or unjust.
And whenever these and similar questions are discussed, when opinions differ about them, the controversy is not, as a rule, between those who wish to apply the categories of justice to these phenomena, and those who deny their applicability; but the struggle is between older and traditional standards of judgment and new ones, the ideals of the eighteenth century with those of the nineteenth; the struggle is between a cruder conception of right and a more refined one, between ideals whose realization is to-day impossible and those that are attainable through the customs and the law of our age; finally ideal conceptions of justice which have already been co-ordinated with other not less justified ideals are arrayed against those which have chosen principles of justice exclusively for their battle-cry.
And just because this struggle never ceases there is, as we have seen above, no simple, universally intelligible, familiar and applicable formula of justice. The conceptions in question may all be reduced to this fundamental idea: everyone according to his merit, "suum cuique"; but the possible application of this rule is always different according to the possibility of innumerable conceptions of value, estimations, groupings and classifications. The abstract pretension, for example, that in labor or even in handiwork rests the unique standard of justice is in equal right with the other pretense that talent, virtue or even the human face must be taken into account. In certain spheres and in respect to certain aims only will one formula or the other gradually prove its justification and thus gain recognition.
But what is it that gives the final decision in this contest of opinions? Is it logical reasoning? Apparently not, or at least not primarily. Much as in the struggle for public and social institutions, all kinds of logical reasons for the justice of a cause are appealed to, they seldom convince and always seem more or less flat. At least they do not convince the opponent, although they are capable of inciting their followers to enthusiastic and desperate struggles. And this is natural. They are not logical decisions. Whether they be traditional standards of valuation, whose immemorial age or even divine origin impresses our spirits or newer conceptions, which by the power of passion inflame the disciples of a school, a party, the members of a class or a people, the final decision rests with the heart, with the innermost centre of human soul and mind.
This explains the vast possibility of error, of delusion, of vehement passions. Ideals of justice may appear in the most distorted forms, in its name the most insane as well as the highest and holiest things are demanded. Long struggles are often necessary to purify concepts of their errors and to develop the ideal in its purity. But at the same time the inward connection between the conceptions of the "just" and the depth of human emotions explains the magic power of their effect. That which moves the inmost heart dominates the wills, the egoism, inspires deeds of valor, carries away the individual and millions to deeds and sacrifices. Hence the mystery that a political platform, an economic contrivance, only influences where it seems an outcome of justice. Hence the involuntary tendency to appeal to justice in every discussion. Hence also the fact that the same theory which proposes a demand of justice as its consequence often is made by individuals, but repudiated by public opinion; and then suddenly with irresistible elementary force it takes hold of the masses, leads them on new paths, radically influences legislation and puts a changed stamp on whole epochs.
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