On the Philosophy of Ethics; An Analytical Essay

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1866 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIV. On Justice. &irocs 8rf To p-fi KoXbv j-Overri.--Soph. Antig. 370. If a distinct Sentiment of Justice exist, it is itself the measure of the just in acts; and by it the human mind may instantaneously discern a quality in the relations of acts and agents, which it at once signalizes as satisfying or offending the sentiment. But if there be no instinctive sentiment of justice identical with or similar to that intense and vivid notion which almost all men have of the just, we are not driven, as is too commonly supposed, to seek the source of that notion outside ourselves, and in our experience of that kind of conduct which promotes the general wellbeing. There is another alternative, the alternative of a complex sentiment. Two elements may in mind, as in matter, go to form a tertium quid, which is as distinct in all its properties, and possesses as distinct an individuality, as either of its constituent elements. Water is neither oxygen nor hydrogen; nor the two regarded as one; but water. At the same time, a complex third in the region of sentiment and emotion cannot possess more authority among the forces of mind, than the elements out of which it springs. Men originally associated together, not for the sake of ulterior advantages, but for the sake of association. Such an association necessarily brought with it a conflict of individual will and interest, and Justice, as a fact of external relation, and as a sentiment, thereupon began to grow. But at this point we pause to ask the question, Out of what did it grow? Its origin was unquestionably this external necessity; necessity, that is to say, of subordinating the satisfaction of the needs and desires of each individual (since limitation was an inevitable condition of the social state) to the ge...