EDITOR'S TABLE. 



843 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



MR. SPENCER ON JUSTICE. 



THE volume which Mr. Spencer has 

 just put forth under the title of 

 Justice, heing the fourth and last part 

 of his proposed first volume on The 

 Principles of Morality, will be eagerly 

 welcomed by a large circle of readers. 

 It has seldom fallen to the lot of a phi- 

 losopher to awaken so wide an interest 

 and sympathy as Mr. Spencer has done. 

 We can not speak of him as a " popular " 

 writer, yet he writes for the people, and 

 each successive volume that he pub- 

 lishes finds a wider constituency than 

 its predecessor. His style is not adapt- 

 ed for literary epicures ; it is not laden 

 with exquisite flavors, nor rich in tone 

 or color, but it has the higher quality 

 of utter truthfulness. Its aim is not to 

 amuse or to flatter, but to convince, and 

 it ever seeks the most direct road to the 

 candid understanding. In illustration 

 Mr. Spencer is unrivaled ; he takes the 

 commonest incidents of life and shows 

 their ethical or philosophical significance 

 in such a way as to stimulate at once 

 the reflective and the observing powers 

 of his readers. If the question were 

 asked, What man has done most to pro- 

 mote the intelligence of mankind in the 

 nineteenth century? we think a very 

 good case might be made out for an- 

 swering Herbert Spencer. He is a 

 man to whose philosophy the world at 

 large can grow up, for there is some- 

 thing in it for everybody, dealing as it 

 does with every day realities and ap- 

 pealing to principles that are implicit in 

 the most familiar actions and reactions 

 of our mental and moral life. 



When we look into a book of Her- 

 bert Spencer's we find ourselves carried 

 out at once into the broad currents of 

 general law ; or, to express it other- 

 wise, we find ourselves assisting as spec- 

 tators at the great drama of life not the 



life of a special society or time, but the 

 vast unfolding life of species and tribes 

 from the lowliest forms up to man in 

 his highest development. In dealing 

 with Justice, or the ethics of social life, 

 Mr. Spencer takes us back to the king- 

 dom of the subhuman, and shows us 

 that even there the germ of justice ex- 

 ists, and that the conditions are being 

 prepared for its fuller manifestation. 

 We have only space to glance at a few 

 of the more interesting views which 

 the present volume contains, but these, 

 we think, will suffice to prove that Mr. 

 Spencer has here given us a most sub- 

 stantial and valuable contribution to 

 the discussion of a highly important 

 subject. We venture, indeed, to risk the 

 assertion that this work will set the lines 

 on which all future discussions of the 

 question of justice will more or less be 

 conducted. 



The primitive law of justice, accord- 

 ing to Mr. Spencer, " implies that each 

 individual ought to receive the benefits 

 and the evils of his own nature and 

 subsequent conduct, neither being pre- 

 vented from having whatever good his 

 actions normally bring him, nor being 

 allowed to shoulder off on to other per- 

 sons whatever ill is brought to him by 

 his actions." This law is, however, in 

 the higher animals of a gregarious type, 

 and still more in man, qualified by the 

 self-restraint necessitated by association ; 

 that is to say, no individual must push 

 the exercise of his active faculties to 

 such a point as to interfere with the 

 exercise of the similar faculties of his 

 neighbors. The latter principle acquires 

 more and more authority the longer as- 

 sociation lasts, and the more highly de- 

 veloped it becomes. Thus the idea of 

 justice comes to consist of two elements 

 an egoistic one, by virtue of which an 

 individual claims benefits proportioned 



