ON JUSTICE. 187 



the cult, he becomes a god, his injunctions become divine com- 

 mands with dreaded punishments for breaches of them. 



These four kinds of fear co-operate. The dread of retaliation, 

 the dread of social dislike, the dread of legal punishment, and the 

 dread of divine vengeance, united in various proportions, form a 

 body of feeling which checks the primitive tendency to pursue 

 the objects of desire without regard to the interests of fellow-men. 

 Containing none of the altruistic sentiment of justice, properly so 

 called, this pro-altruistic sentiment of justice serves temporarily 

 to cause respect for one another's claims, and so to make social 

 co-operation possible. 



Creatures which become gregarious tend to become sympa- 

 thetic in degrees proportionate to their intelligences. Not, in- 

 deed, that the resulting sympathetic tendency is exclusively, or 

 even mainly, of that kind which the words ordinarily imply ; for 

 in some there is little beyond sympathy in fear, and in others 

 little beyond sympathy in ferocity. All that is meant is that in 

 gregarious creatures a feeling displayed by one is apt to arouse 

 kindred feelings in others, and is apt to do this in proportion as 

 others are intelligent enough to appreciate the signs of the feel- 

 ing. In two chapters of the Principles of Psychology — Sociality 

 and Sympathy and Altruistic Sentiments — I have endeavored to 

 show how sympathy in general arises, and how there is eventually 

 produced altruistic sympathy. 



The implication is, then, that the associated state having been 

 maintained among men by the aid of the pro-altruistic sentiment 

 of justice, there have been maintained the conditions under which 

 the altruistic sentiment of justice itself can develop. In a per- 

 manent group there occur, generation after generation, incidents 

 simultaneously drawing from its members manifestations of like 

 emotions — rejoicings over victories and escapes, over prey jointly 

 captured, over supplies of wild food discovered ; as well as la- 

 ments over defeats, scarcities, inclemencies, etc. And to these 

 greater pleasures and pains felt in common by all, and so express- 

 ing themselves that each sees in others the signs of feelings like 

 those which he has and is displaying, must be added the smaller 

 pleasures and pains daily resulting from meals taken together, 

 amusements, games, and from the not infrequent adverse occur- 

 rences which affect several persons at once. Thus there is fos- 

 tered that sympathy which makes the altruistic sentiment of 

 justice possible. 



But the altruistic sentiment of justice is slow in assuming a 

 high form, partly because its primary component does not become 

 highly developed until a late phase of progress, partly because it 

 is relatively complex, and partly because it implies a stretch of 



