610 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



of this phrase commonly conceived, that a more specific state 

 ment must be made. Justice then, as here to be understood, 

 means preservation of the normal connexions between acts 

 and results the obtainment by each of as much benefit as 

 Iiis 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 consequences 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 there 

 fore 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 excluded all forms of communistic distribution, the inevi 

 table trait of which is that they tend to equalize the lives of 

 good and bad, idle and diligent, is readily proved. For when, 

 the straggle for existence between 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 indi 

 viduals individuals best adapted for life in the industrial state. 

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

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

 of their offspring, the entire proceeds of their labour ; but in 

 the other of which the superior have taken from them part of 

 these proceeds for the benefit 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. It must not be inferred that private and 

 voluntary aid to the inferior is negatived, but only public 

 and enforced aid. Whatever effects the sympathies of the 

 better for the worse spontaneously produce, cannot, of course, 

 be interfered with ; and will, on the whole, be beneficial. For 

 while, on the average, the better will not carry such efforts so 



