6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Already they have heen implied and comprehended under the ad- 

 ministration of justice ; hut so vaguely is the meaning of this phrase 

 commonly conceived that a more specific statement must he made. 

 Justice, then, as here to be understood, means preservation of the nor- 

 mal connections between acts and results the ohtainment by each of 

 as much benefit as his efforts are equivalent to no more and no less. 

 Living and working within the restraints imposed by one another's 

 presence, justice requires that individuals shall severally take the con- 

 sequences of their conduct, neither increased nor decreased. The 

 superior shall have the good of his superiority, and the inferior the 

 evil of his inferiority. A veto is therefore put on all public action 

 which abstracts from some men part of the advantages they have 

 earned and awards to other men advantages they have not earned. 



That from the developed industrial type of society there are ex- 

 cluded all forms of communistic distribution, the inevitable trait of 

 which is that they tend to equalize the lives of good and bad, idle and 

 diligent, is readily proved. For, when, the struggle for existence be- 

 tween societies by war having ceased, there remains only the industrial 

 struggle for existence, the final survival and spread must be on the 

 part of those societies which produce the largest number of the best 

 individuals individuals best adapted for life in the industrial state. 

 Suppose two societies, otherwise equal, in one of which the superior 

 are allowed to retain, for their own benefit and the benefit of their 

 offspring, the entire proceeds of their labor, but in the other of which 

 the superior have taken from them part of these proceeds for the ben- 

 efit of the inferior and their offspring. Evidently the superior will 

 thrive and multiply more in the first than in the second. A greater 

 number of the best children will be reared in the first, and eventually 

 it will outgrow the second.* 



Otherwise regarded, this system, under which the efforts of each 

 bring neither more nor less than their natural returns, is the system of 

 contract. 



We have seen that the regime of status is in all ways proper to the 

 militant type. It is the concomitant of that graduated subordination 

 by which the combined action of a fighting body is achieved, and 

 which must pervade the fighting society at large to insure its corpo- 

 rate action. Under this regime, the relation between labor and prod- 

 uce is traversed by authority. As in the army, the food, clothing, 

 etc., received by each soldier are not direct returns for work done, but 



* It must not be inferred that private and voluntary aid to the inferior is negatived, 

 but only public and enforced aid. AVhatevcr effects the sympathies of the better for the 

 worse spontaneously produce, can not, of course, be interfered with, and will, on the 

 whole, be beneficial. For, while, on the average, the better will not ordinarily carry their 

 philanthropic efforts so far as to impede their own multiplication, they will carry them 

 far enough to mitigate the ill-fortunes of the worse without enabling them to multiply. 



