ABSOLUTE POLITICAL ETHICS. 613 



peoples have discovered the need for punishing murder, usually 

 by death ? How is it that where any considerable progress has 

 been made, theft is forbidden by law, and a penalty attached to 

 it ? Why along with further advance does the enforcing of con- 

 tracts become general ? And what is the reason that among fully 

 civilized peoples frauds, libels, and minor aggressions of various 

 kinds are repressed in more or less rigorous ways ? No cause can 

 be assigned save a general uniformity in men's experiences, 

 showing them that aggressions directly injurious to the indi- 

 viduals aggressed upon are indirectly injurious to society. Gen- 

 eration after generation observations have forced this truth on 

 them ; and generation after generation they have been developing 

 the interdicts into greater detail. That is to say, the above fun- 

 damental principle and its corollaries arrived at a priori are veri- 

 fied in an infinity of cases a posteriori. Everywhere the tendency 

 has been to carry further in practice the dictates of theory to 

 conform systems of law to the requirements of absolute political 

 ethics: if not consciously, still unconsciously. Nay, indeed, is 

 not this truth manifest in the very name used for the end aimed 

 at equity or equalness ? Equalness of what ? No answer can 

 be given without a recognition vague it may be, but still a rec- 

 ognition of the doctrine above set forth. 



Thus, instead of being described as putting faith in "long 

 chains of deduction from abstract ethical assumptions " I ought to 

 be described as putting faith in simple deductions from abstract 

 ethical necessities; which deductions are verified by infinitely 

 numerous observations and experiences of semi-civilized and civi- 

 lized mankind in all ages and places. Or rather I ought to be de- 

 scribed as one who, contemplating the restraints everywhere put 

 upon the, various kinds of transgressions, and seeing in them all a 

 common principle everywhere dictated by the necessities of the 

 associated state, proceeds to develop the consequences of this 

 common principle by deduction, and to justify both the deduc- 

 tions and the conclusions which legislators have empirically 

 reached by showing that the two correspond. This method of 

 deduction verified by induction is the method of developed sci- 

 ence at large. I do not believe that I shall be led to abandon it 

 and change my "way of thinking" by any amount of disap- 

 proval, however strongly expressed. 



Are we then to understand that by this imposing title, " Abso- 

 lute Political Ethics," nothing more is meant than a theory of the 

 needful restraints which law imposes on the actions of citizens 

 an ethical warrant for systems of law ? Well, supposing even 

 that I had to answer " Yes " to this question (which I do not), 

 there would still be an ample justification for the title. Having 

 for its subject-matter all that is comprehended under the word 



